Environmental &
Architectural
Phenomenology
Vol. 25 ▪ No. 3 (DOI: 10.13140/2.1.1134.0161) ISSN 1083–9194
1990–2014: Special 25th-anniversary issue!
T
his EAP celebrates 25 years of publication.
In early spring, EAP editor David Seamon
sent out invitations to contribute an essay
for a special fall issue. In response, Seamon
received the 19 entries that follow. To accommodate
this issue’s length as a paper copy, we have used a
triple-column, ten-point format. The digital version
remains in the usual two-column, 12-point format.
In his introduction to this anniversary issue, Sea-
mon reproduces the list of potential questions that he
suggested contributors might address (see p. 4).
Though few of the entries answer these questions di-
rectly, one notes that they underlie many of the au-
thors’ concerns and serve as pointers toward im-
portant matters that may mark the future of environ-
mental and architectural phenomenology.
One of these matters is the impact of digital in-
formation, hyperspace, and virtual reality on real-
world places, life, and events. This concern affects
EAP immediately, since this will be the last paper
issue—production and especially postage costs have
become too much to bear. As readers know, EAP is
www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/EAP.html Fall ▪ 2014
already available in an open-source digital version.
With the elimination of paper copies, we will no
longer send out a subscription request in fall issues.
In lieu of subscriptions, we ask that readers make a
donation for whatever amount they feel EAP is worth
(see back page), since we still have production ex-
penses.
We thank those readers who have supported
EAP over the last 25 years. At its peak, in the late
1990s, our subscription list reached 150. Since open
access, however, our paid readership has plummeted;
in 2014, we received subscriptions from only 41 in-
dividuals and ten academic libraries. Though this
loss in subscribership is discouraging, there is an en-
couraging side too. Since it became open source,
EAP has been seen by many more readers than paper
copies could generate. For example, (cont. on p. 2)
Below: Booleroo Backyard–Panel 3, 60 x 213cm, 2014. This
painting by artist Sue Michael pictures a backyard in Booleroo
Centre, a small Australian town north of Adelaide. Note how
outside and inside interconnect, a lifeworld feature Michael
discusses in her essay, p. 11. For panels 1 & 2, see back page.
Cont. from p. 1
the fall 2014 issue has been viewed more
than 1,100 times on the academia.edu web-
site. We are told by the Kansas State Uni-
versity webmaster in charge of K-Rex (the
digital library holding the EAP archive)
that “hits” to the EAP collection are regu-
larly in the top ten percent of most down-
loaded entries. Phenomenological insights
may be gaining traction in a way unimagi-
nable via paper distribution alone!
As some readers remember, EAP was
originally envisioned by philosopher Rob-
ert Mugerauer (see his essay, p. 7), inte-
rior-design educator Margaret Boschetti,
and environment-behavior researcher Da-
vid Seamon at a breakfast meeting at the
1989 Environmental Design Research As-
sociation (EDRA) conference. Boschetti
and Seamon took on the task of co-editing
EAP until 2002, when Boschetti retired and
Seamon became editor. Boshetti was una-
ble to contribute an essay to mark EAP’s
anniversary, but she did send a congratula-
tory note. She wrote:
David,
Congratulations on the 25th anniversary
of EAP. Hard to believe it has been 25
years since you launched this idea and
asked me to be involved. It is truly a tribute
to your commitment to encourage the ex-
pansion of interest and knowledge in envi-
ronmental phenomenology that this mile-
stone has been reached. Not only has the
publication of EAP supported scholars,
both established and new, to explore and
expand their research in this field. It also
has introduced voices from neighboring
disciplines into the on-going dialog,
thereby enriching the total milieu.
I clearly recall how important it was to my
career when I met you at a conference and
discovered a group of like-minded re-
searchers. Phenomenology not only pro-
vided a way to investigate questions of in-
terest to me. It gave me a home in the aca-
demic community so I could continue to
grow and move forward professionally. In
that respect, I am like so many others
whom you supported via EAP. Best wishes
going forward as you continue to support
young scholars and mature minds with
EAP.
Fond regards,
Margaret Boschetti
Hot Springs, Arkansas
More Donors, 2014
We thank the following readers who, since
the spring 2014 issue, have contributed
more than the base subscription for 2014:
Andrew Cohill, Janet Donohoe, Ben
Jacks, and Harvey Sherman.
Items of Interest
The 18th annual meeting of the Interna-
tional Association for Environmental
Philosophy (IAEP) will be held October
25–27, 2014, in New Orleans. The confer-
ence follows the annual meetings of the
Society for Existential and Phenomeno-
logical Philosophy (SPEP); and the Soci-
ety for Phenomenology and the Human
Sciences (SPHS). http://environmentalphiloso-
phy.org/; www.spep.org/; http://sphs.info/.
The 45th annual meeting of the Urban Af-
fairs Association (UAA) will be held in
Miami, Florida, April 8–11, 2015. The
theme of the conference is “The Dynamics
of Place Making in the Global City.” The
UAA is dedicated to creating interdiscipli-
nary spaces for engaging in intellectual and
practical discussions about urban life.
http://urbanaffairsassociation.org/.
The conference, Philosophy of The City
II, will be held December 4–5, 2014 in
Mexico City. Key questions include: What
do philosophers have to say about urban
life? Is there a need for a new philosophy
of the city? This conference builds on an
earlier conference held in Brooklyn, New
York, in 2013. Contact: shane.epting@unt.edu.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Phenome-
nology supports research in aesthetics that
draws inspiration from the phenomenolog-
ical tradition. The journal provides a plat-
form for innovative ideas that cross philo-
sophical traditions and traditionally ac-
cepted fields of research in aesthetics.
www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bloomsbury/jap.
ARID: A Journal of Desert Art, Design
and Ecology is a peer-reviewed annual
publication focusing on explorations of de-
sert arts, design, culture and the environ-
ment for both scholarly and new audiences.
ARID seeks submissions related to desert
regions of the American Southwest and be-
yond. editors@aridjournal.org.
2
Habits and Habituality
Philosophers Matt Bower and Emanuele
Carminada have edited a special 2014 is-
sue of Phenomenology and Mind, which
focuses on “Mind, Habits, and Social Re-
ality.” The 14 articles examine “habit, es-
pecially its personal and interpersonal as-
pects.” Contributors include: Dermot Mo-
ran (“The Ego as Substrate of Habituali-
ties: Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of
the Habitual Self”); Maxine Sheets-John-
son (“On the Origin, Nature, and Genesis
of Habit”); and Nick Crossley (“The Con-
cept of Habit and the Regularities of Social
Structure”). The issue ends with a bibliog-
raphy of work relating to habituality. This
open-access journal is available at:
http://www.phenomenologyandmind.eu/. See the
first sidebar, p. 3, for a portion of Moran’s
essay.
Max van Manen’s New Book
Max van Manen, 2014. Phenomenol-
ogy of Practice: Meaning-Giving
Methods in Phenomenological Re-
search and Writing. Walnut Creek,
California: Left Coast Press.
Throughout his academic career, educator
Max van Manen has been one of the most
accessible commentators on phenomeno-
logical method. His Researching Human
Experience (1990) is one of the most fre-
quently recommended introductions for
newcomers to phenomenological and her-
meneutic research. No doubt, Phenome-
nology of Practice will come to hold an
equal place because it is a masterly account
of the nature of phenomenology and the
lived experience of doing phenomenologi-
cal research.
The book includes thoughtful, lucid
discussion of three key aspects of the phe-
nomenological process: first, the phenom-
enological epoché; second, the phenome-
nological reduction; and third, phenome-
nological writing. Van Manen explains:
“…the hope is that for the reader this will
be a phenomenology of phenomenology:
phenomenological reflections on varieties
and versions of phenomenological inquiry
and method: the moding and methoding of
meaning as we live it prereflectively and
reflectively” (p. 25). See the sidebar, p. 3.
“Life lived ‘with blinders on’…”
Central to Husserl’s analyses [of habit]
is his understanding of habitual life in
the familiar world. This is always a life
where meanings are encountered or
lived through as “always already there”
or “pre-given.” The everyday world of
experience has a deep degree of stabil-
ity, commonality, normality, familiar-
ity, and even comfort. It is the common
context and horizon for our collective
concerns…. Precisely because every-
day life has a pre-given, taken-for-
granted character, it is invisible in the
analyses of the positive sciences. The
operations of this hidden intentionality
need to be made visible, and Husserl
gradually realized this required a major
suspension of our naïve worldly-com-
mitment, or belief-in-being.
For Husserl, everyday life is natu-
ral life, life in the natural attitude. This
is a life lived in obscurity, the unex-
amined life, life lived according to eve-
ryday habituality, life lived “with blin-
ders on” as Husserl often says.
Husserl’s phenomenology of ha-
bitual life discovers habit as present at
all levels of human behavior from the
lower unconscious instincts and drives
(that have their own peculiar individu-
ality or idiosyncrasy) to bodily motility
right up to the level of autonomous ra-
tional life in culture. Thus he speaks
not just of bodily habits or traits of
character but of peculiar and abiding
“habits of thought.” These habits of
thought include scientific habits of
thinking accepted without question and
that it is the function of the transcen-
dental epoché to disrupt and thereby
expose.
The life of habit… is not just a
matter of intellectual attitude or con-
viction. It can also be a matter of per-
ceptual tendencies, desires, feelings,
emotions, even peculiar moods. Hus-
serl recognizes the complex character
of our “feelings,” as well as our inter-
twined emotional and affective
“states,” acts of empathy, sympathy
love, fellow feeling, and so on, as well
as acts of willing (important for our
ethical lives). In this sense, personal
love, for Husserl, is described as a
“lasting habitus.” All of these can have
a habitual character, a particular style
of being lived through, and as a result
they can be sedimented into layers that
encrust the psyche and form the “abid-
ing style of the ego” (from Dermot
Moran, “The Ego as Substrate of Ha-
bitualities,” pp. 28–29; see “Habits and
Habituality,” preceding page).
van Manen on Phenomenology
and Wonder
Phenomenological method is driven by
a pathos: being swept up in a spell of
wonder about phenomena as they ap-
pear, show, present, or give themselves
to us. In the encounter with the things
and events of the world, phenomenol-
ogy directs its gaze toward the regions
where meanings and understandings
originate, well up, and percolate
through the porous membranes of past
sedimentations—then infuse, permeate,
infect, touch, stir us, and exercise a
formative and affective effect on our be-
ing…. To say it more pointedly:
 Phenomenological research begins
with wonder at what gives itself
and how something gives itself. It
can only be pursued while surren-
dering to a state of wonder.
 A phenomenological question ex-
plores what is given in moments of
prereflective, prepredicative expe-
rience—experiences as we live
through them.
 Phenomenology aims to grasp the
exclusively singular aspects (iden-
tity/essence/otherness) of a phe-
nomenon or event.
 The epoché (bracketing) and the re-
duction proper are the two most
critical components of the various
forms of the reductions—though
the reduction itself is understood
quite differently, at times incom-
mensurably, and sometimes con-
tested by various leading philoso-
phers and phenomenologists.
 Phenomenological reduction and
analysis occur primarily in the atti-
tude of the epoché, the reduction,
and the vocative… (pp. 26–27).
3
Epoché and Reduction
How can phenomenology gain access to
the prereflective experiences as they oc-
cur in the taken-for-granted spheres of
our everyday lifeworld? Normally we
rarely reflect on the lived sensibilities of
our experiences, since we already expe-
rience the meanings immanent in our
everyday practices through our bodies,
language, habits, things, social interac-
tions, and physical environments.
Phenomenology is the method to
break through this taken-for-granted-
ness and to get to the meaning structures
of our experiences. This basic method is
called the reduction. The reduction con-
sists of two methodical opposing moves
that complement each other. Negatively
it suspends or removes what obstructs
access to the phenomenon—this move
is called the epoché or bracketing. And
positively it returns, leads back to the
mode of appearing of the phenome-
non—this move is called the reduc-
tion…. (p. 215).
The epoché describes the ways that we
need to open ourselves to the world as
we experience it and free ourselves
from presuppositions The reduction is
generally the methodological term that
describes the phenomenological ges-
ture that permits us to rediscover what
Merleau-Ponty (1962) calls “the spon-
taneous surge of the lifeworld” and the
way that the phenomena give and show
themselves in their uniqueness. The
aim of the reduction is to re-achieve a
direct and primitive contact with the
world as we experience it or as it
shows itself—rather than as we con-
ceptualize it. But we need to realize as
well that in some sense nothing is
“simply given.” The phenomenological
attitude is sustained by wonder, atten-
tiveness, and a desire for meaning….
[T]he reduction aims at removing any
barriers, assumptions, suppositions,
projections, and linguisticalities that
prevent the phenomena and events of
the lifeworld to appear or show them-
selves as they give themselves. So we
need to engage in the reduction in or-
der to let that which gives itself show
itself (van Manen, p. 220 and p. 221).
Possible Questions for the 25th - Anniversary Issue of EAP (see p. 5)
Questions relating to phenomenology
and related interpretive approaches
and methods:
 What is phenomenology and what does
it offer to whom?
 What is the state of phenomenological
research today? What are your hopes
and concerns regarding phenomenol-
ogy?
 Does phenomenology continue to have
relevance in examining human experi-
ence in relation to world?
 Are there various conceptual and meth-
odological modes of phenomenology
and, if so, how can they be categorized
and described?
 Has phenomenological research been
superseded by other conceptual ap-
proaches—e.g., post-structuralism, so-
cial-constructionism, relationalist and
non-representational perspectives, the
various conceptual “turns,” and so
forth?
 Can phenomenology contribute to mak-
ing a better world? If so, what are the
most crucial phenomena and topics to
be explored phenomenologically?
 Can phenomenological research offer
practical results in terms of design,
planning, policy, and advocacy?
 How might phenomenological insights
be broadcast in non-typical academic
ways—e.g., through artistic expression,
theatrical presentation, digital evoca-
tion, virtual realities, and so forth?
 What are the most important aims for
future phenomenological research?
 Do the various post-structural and so-
cial-constructionist criticisms of phe-
nomenology—that it is essentialist,
masculinist, authoritative, voluntarist,
ignorant of power structures, and so
forth—point toward its demise?
Questions relating to the natural
world and environmental and ecologi-
cal concerns:
 Can there be a phenomenology of na-
ture and the natural world?
 What can phenomenology offer the in-
tensifying environmental and ecological
crises we face today?
 Can phenomenology contribute to more
sustainable actions and worlds?
 Can one speak of a sustainable life-
world?
 What is a phenomenology of a lived en-
vironmental ethic and who are the key
contributors?
 Do the “sacred” and the “holy” have a
role in caring for the natural world? For
places? For lifeworlds broadly?
 Can phenomenology contribute to envi-
ronmental education? If so, in what
ways?
 Can there be a phenomenology of the
two laws of thermodynamics, especially
the second law claiming that all activi-
ties, left to their own devices, tend to-
ward greater disorder and fewer possi-
bilities? Are there ways whereby phe-
nomenological understanding of life-
world might help to reduce the acceler-
ating disordering of natural and human
worlds?
Questions relating to place, place ex-
perience, and place meaning:
 Why has the topic of place become an
important phenomenological topic?
 Can a phenomenological understanding
of place contribute to better place mak-
ing?
 Can phenomenology contribute to a
generative understanding of place and
place making?
 What roles do bodily regularity and ha-
bitual inertia play in the constitution of
place and place experience?
 What are the lived relationships be-
tween place, sustainability, and a re-
sponsive environmental ethic?
 How are phenomenological accounts to
respond to post-structural interpreta-
tions of space and place as rhizomic and
a “meshwork of paths” (Ingold)?
 Can phenomenological accounts incor-
porate a “progressive sense of place”
argued for by critical theorists like
Doreen Massey?
 Can phenomenological explications of
space and place account for human dif-
ferences—gender, sexuality, less-
abledness, social class, cultural back-
ground, and so forth?
 Can phenomenology contribute to the
politics and ideology of place?
 Can a phenomenological understanding
of lived embodiment and habitual iner-
tia be drawn upon to facilitate robust
places and to generate mutual support
and understanding among places, espe-
cially places that are considerably dif-
ferent (e.g., different ethnic neighbor-
hoods or regions)?
 Can phenomenology contribute to mo-
bility, the nature of “flows,” rhizomic
spaces, the places of mobility, non-
4
spaces and their relationship to mobility
and movement?
Questions relating to architecture and
environmental design and policy:
 Can there be a phenomenology of archi-
tecture and architectural experience and
meaning?
 Can phenomenology contribute to bet-
ter architectural design?
 How do qualities of the designable
world—spatiality, materiality, lived
aesthetics, environmental embodiment
etc.—contribute to lifeworlds?
 What are the most pertinent environ-
mental and architectural features con-
tributing to a lifeworld’s being one way
rather than another?
 What role will cyberspace and digital
technologies have in 21st-century life-
worlds? How will they play a role in
shaping designed environments, partic-
ularly architecture?
 What impact will digital advances and
virtual realities have on physical em-
bodiment, architectural design, and
real-world places? Will virtual reality
eventually be able to simulate “real re-
ality” entirely? If so, how does such a
development transform the nature of
lifeworld, natural attitude, place, and ar-
chitecture?
 Can virtual worlds become so “real”
that they are lived as “real” worlds?
Other potential questions:
 What is the lived relationship between
people and the worlds in which they
find themselves?
 Can lifeworlds be made to happen self-
consciously? If so, how? Through what
individual efforts? Through what group
efforts?
 Can a phenomenological education in
lifeworld, place, and environmental em-
bodiment assist citizens and profession-
als in better understand the workings
and needs of real-world places and
thereby contribute to their envisioning
and making?
 Is it possible to speak of human-rights-
in-place or place justice? If so, would
such a possibility move attention and
supportive efforts toward improving the
places in which people and other living
beings find themselves, rather than fo-
cusing only on the rights and needs of
individuals and groups without consid-
eration of their place context?
Human-Immersion-in-World: Twenty-Five Years of EAP
David Seamon, Editor, Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology
T he last longer-than-usual issue of
EAP was produced for its 20th anni-
versary in 2009. In that issue, I pub-
lished essays by four major figures in envi-
ronmental and architectural phenomenol-
ogy—psychologist Bernd Jager, geographer
Edward Relph, and philosophers Karsten
Harries and Jeff Malpas. In my introduction
[1], I highlighted three “recurring concerns”
that grounded the aims and contents of EAP:
 First, an emphasis on existential phe-
nomenology—in other words, the abso-
lute necessity of phenomenological
work grounded in, arising from, and re-
turning to concrete experience and the
lived reality of lifeworlds;
 Second, an emphasis on researchers’
openness to the phenomenon and offer-
ing it a supportive space in which it pre-
sents itself in a way whereby it is what it
is most accurately and comprehensively;
 Third, an effort to hold theory and prac-
tice together, since a central phenome-
nological assumption is that how and
what we understand is how and what we
make; therefore, finding more accurate
ways to see, think, and envision should,
in turn, strengthen design, planning, pol-
icy, and advocacy.
These concerns remain central to the
aims of EAP, and I don’t wish to discuss
them again here. Rather, in this introduction
to the special 25th-anniversary issue, I, first,
explain how its format came into being; and,
second, discuss the one theme that has
struck me most strongly in editing this spe-
cial issue—i.e., the question of how we ac-
curately understand, describe, envision,
plan, and design for a central phenomeno-
logical claim: that human beings are always
already inescapably immersed and en-
twined in their worlds that, most of the time,
“just happen” without the intervention of
anything or anyone.
A s I considered scenarios for a special
anniversary issue, I decided that the
most revealing possibility might be to invite
a good number of individuals associated
with “environmental and architectural phe-
nomenology” to contribute a short essay of
500–2,500 words. I sent out some 60 invita-
tions and eventually received the 19 essays
published here. In my letter of invitation, I
explained that my aim was to “produce a
special fall issue marking a quarter century
of phenomenological work relating to envi-
ronmental and architectural concerns.” I in-
cluded a list of possible questions that con-
tributors might wish to address (see p. 4). I
emphasized, however, that, “if there are
some other relevant questions or themes
more important to you currently, then please
focus on those.”
In studying the 19 essays, one notes
that most contributors did not respond to my
questions directly but, instead, focused on
related themes and situations, all of which
are still central to EAP in that they indicate
important directions that future work in en-
vironmental and architectural phenomenol-
ogy might take. Robert Mugerauer’s open-
ing essay is a helpful historical overview of
“environmental and architectural phenome-
nology,” particularly its disciplinary and
professional dimensions and starting points.
In pondering the arrangement of the
other 18 essays, I decided to organize them
thematically. The first five essays—by psy-
chologist Eva-Maria Simms, artist Sue Mi-
chael, and philosophers Jeff Malpas,
Bruce Janz, and Dennis Skocz—deal in
various ways with the theme of place—why
it is important phenomenologically; how it
might be understood via real-world situa-
tions; how human attachment to place might
be intensified; and how physical, environ-
mental, and human qualities contribute to a
sense of place.
The next five essays—by anthropolo-
gist Tim Ingold, ecologist Mark Riegner,
environmental educator John Cameron,
and philosophers Janet Donohoe and
Bryan Bannon—shift focus toward the
lived constitution of nature, the natural en-
vironment, and the natural world. A central
concern is how, conceptually and practi-
cally, we replace the standard modernist di-
vision between people and world with a
5
penetrating, multidimensional recognition
that human-being-in-the world always in-
volves aspects of nature, though these au-
thors disagree considerably as to how this
lived immersion is to be understood concep-
tually or to be encountered experientially.
The next three essays—by architec-
tural theorist Lena Hopsch, philosopher
Matthew S. Bower, and educator Paul
Krafel—shift attention toward real-world
“applications” of phenomenological princi-
ples and methods—Hopsch, in terms of
transit design; Bower, in terms of lived im-
plications of virtual realities; and Krafel, in
terms of a more engaged, animated peda-
gogy, including environmental education.
The last five essays highlight broader
conceptual issues such as the subjectivity-
objectivity dilemma (geographer Yi-Fu
Tuan); the appropriate relationship between
phenomenology and analytic, empirical sci-
ence (architect Julio Bermudez); phenom-
enology as practiced by non-phenomenolo-
gists (geographer Edward Relph); the rela-
tionship between phenomenological under-
standing and practical application (philoso-
pher Ingrid Stefanovic); and parallels be-
tween real-world and phenomenological
pathways and journeys (phenomenologist
Betsy Behnke).
It is particularly appropriate that this
special EAP issue ends with Behnke’s es-
say, since her invaluable Study Project in
Phenomenology of the Body Newsletter,
published from 1988 to 1994, was one of the
original inspirations for EAP. In that sense,
endings often resonate with starting points.
I n studying the 19 essays that follow, one
can locate a considerable range of related
themes, but I want to focus on one that lately
has returned again and again to my thinking
and writing: the difficult business of under-
standing the complex, multivalent ways in
which we, as human beings, are intertwined,
intermeshed, entrenched and submerged in
the worlds in which we find ourselves.
Different phenomenologists have
sought to clarify this “lived immersion” var-
iously, with Husserl emphasizing intention-
ality, lifeworld, and natural attitude;
Heidegger, being-in-world and dwelling;
and Merleau-Ponty, lived embodiment, chi-
asm, and flesh. In his essay, Relph reminds
us of yet another important effort to phrase
this lived-immersion-in-world: French his-
torian Eric Dardel’s perspicacious notion of
geographicality—“the relationships and ex-
periences that bind human beings to the
earth, which [Dardel] considered to be fun-
damental aspects of human existence.”
Relph quotes Dardel’s striking claim that
geographicality “is not to be looked at but
is, rather, an insertion of people into the
world….”
Several contributors to this special is-
sue consider how this people-world inter-
lock might be phrased conceptually. Most
directly concerned with this matter is Mal-
pas, who speaks of “human being as placed
being” and goes so far as to suggest that, be-
cause human beings are always already em-
placed, phenomenology might consider re-
branding itself as topology, since “every ap-
pearing or presencing is itself a ‘taking
place’.”
In different ways, Donohoe and Ingold
make a similar point in relation to the con-
stitution of nature as it is lived. Drawing on
Merleau-Ponty, Donohoe views nature “not
as a thing but as a ground of experience it-
self”—a “world of which we are always al-
ready aware.” Ingold argues that, in speak-
ing of a phenomenology of the natural
world, we conceptually presuppose an arti-
ficial division—a separating betweenness—
whereby we fail “to notice how both we and
[the beings and things of nature] go along
together in the current of time.” How, he
asks, do we really understand and foster a
“togethering” rather than yet another “oth-
ering”?
An answer to this question is sug-
gested by other contributors, though in con-
trasting ways. For Simms, Michael, and
Cameron, a lived enjoinment with place en-
tails prolonged, care-grounded engagement,
a way of being with the world that Riegner
also points to in his overview of Goethean
science as a sensitive phenomenology of na-
ture. Though he would probably not use In-
gold’s phrasing, Malpas finds this “togeth-
ering” in the intimate, inseparable “gather-
ing” of people-in-place. As he has written so
eloquently elsewhere, place is “constituted
through a gathering of elements that are
themselves mutually defined only through
the way in which they are gathered together
within the place they also constitute” [2].
In considerable contrast, Bannon ar-
gues that most current phenomenologies of
human-being-in-the-world remain caught
up in a modernist “subject-object metaphys-
ics.” He suggests that we must move away
from any claims of some essential, always-
present lived structure of people-world. In-
stead, he emphasizes that we consider “de-
centering the human” and recognizing how
ecological systems are always in continual
flux. Bannon intimates that the conventional
phenomenological emphasis on order,
unity, synthesis, generalization, and truth
needs reconsideration via more recent post-
structuralist, relationalist, and materialist
perspectives that favor indeterminacy, di-
versity, local narratives, particularity, and
contingent possibilities.
F or me personally, the entry most intri-
guing is Matthew Bower’s discussion of
virtual reality, which he sees as progres-
sively “part and parcel of the naïve every-
dayness of life” and entering “into relation
with all other nodes of our perceptual field,
modifying the nature of the whole.”
As some EAP readers no doubt know,
virtual reality (VR) has recently made a
quantum leap via 22-year-old inventor
Palmer Lucky’s headset device called the
Oculus Rift, bought by Facebook in March,
2014, for two billion dollars. This digital
machine is the first to generate fully what
VR programmers call presence—a deep,
unquestioned sense one is somewhere else,
for example, a simulation of a craggy, rocky
mountainside that seems so real that you re-
ally think you could fall into the deep chasm
below [3].
On one hand, Bower’s claims for the
VR future are hopeful in that “we can find a
virtuality that is not set over and against the
real” but extends reality and enhances virtu-
ally what reality was before VR. On the
other hand, there is the phenomenological
work of philosopher Albert Borgmann,
who is less sanguine because of the lived
ways that virtual reality can facilitate expe-
riences that might seem real but could never
fully unfold in real reality [4]. Borgmann
identifies four lived qualities that trigger en-
hancements, distortions, or reductions of
what “experience” often becomes in virtual
reality:
6
 Pliability: the way that virtual objects
and experiences can be “entirely sub-
ject[ed] to… desire and manipulation”
[5];
 Discontinuity: the way that virtual ob-
jects and experiences need not have any
practical connection or lived relation-
ship with the real-world situation in the
midst of which the virtual user is still
immersed even as he partakes in virtual
reality;
 Brilliance: The way that virtual reality
can intensify an experience’s attractive
features and reduce or eliminate en-
tirely its unpleasant, uninteresting, or
irrelevant dimensions; the “truly bril-
liant reality,” writes Borghman, “would
exclude all unwanted information” [6];
 Disposability: The way that virtual us-
ers can end the virtual experience at any
time and feel no responsibility or obli-
gation to the “events” and “experi-
ences” of the virtual reality they have
just left; in this sense, virtual reality is
readily dismissible and disposable.
Underlying these four qualities of vir-
tual experience is the more fundamental
phenomenological recognition that “Reality
encumbers and confines” [7]. Though vir-
tual reality may superficially seem real, it
can readily escape and replace the lived
messiness of real lifeworlds with much
more convenient, vivid, or fantastical situa-
tions that require no stakes or responsibili-
ties.
On one hand, VR holds remarkable
promise in that it could be a huge contribu-
tor to repairing a good number of the
world’s problems. Who, for example, would
need a car if he could simply put on his vir-
tual headset and “go to” his workplace, gro-
cery store, or favorite recreation place? Or
who needs an elaborate house (or vacation,
hobby, or fun night out) when all these “ex-
periences” and “places” might be less costly
generated vicariously and virtually?
On the other hand, VR involves poten-
tial risks and dangers, including time wast-
ing, titillation, addiction, and withdrawal
from most things real. Why make the efforts
that an encumbering, confining real world
entails when virtual reality can provide ease,
pleasure, and enhanced vividness without
the downside of demands, exertions, obliga-
tions, or consequences?
I highlight virtual reality because, as
Borgmann and Bower’s work indicates,
phenomenological perspectives can offer
singular insights as to VR’s possibilities and
implications. Lifeworld, natural attitude, in-
tentionality, horizon, body-subject, embod-
ied emplacement, lived place, and other key
phenomenological notions all identify inte-
gral constituents of any human experience,
whether real or virtual. Human beings are
always already soldered in and to their
worlds, even if the soldering may be virtual.
It’s about People
Robert Mugerauer
Mugerauer is Professor and Dean Emeritus in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is a
co-founder of EAP and, over the years, has provided invaluable support and inspiration. His current work focuses on applying phe-
nomenology and complexity theory to issues of environmental well-being. He has written Heidegger and Homecoming (University of
Toronto Press, 2008). drbobm@uw.edu. © 2014 Robert Mugerauer.
E AP is celebrating its 25th year of suc-
cessfully accomplishing a central
task: working as a site for phenome-
nologically exploring our lifeworld. In do-
ing so, it has exemplified the core dimen-
sions of both the phenomena and the ap-
proach: focusing on our lives together in our
environmental and architectural realms and
on the ways we come to understanding as
part of a social, communal project. EAP has
insightfully shown us what is given but too
often overlooked because we are caught up
in the midst of what we are doing. Lifeworld
meanings, in other words, are normally ex-
perienced implicitly and not unfolded ex-
plicitly.
As a result of attending to EAP’s
gift—evoking meanings and values that en-
rich our lives—many of us, whether specif-
ically working phenomenologically or with
related qualitative strategies, have found
ourselves called to participate in dialogue
and to respond with research, design, and
education.
What strikes me most in looking back
over past EAP issues is the atmosphere of
openness and freedom that prevails in the
course of presenting fresh insights and sub-
stantive content. The project never was to
Understanding this soldering, in its myriad 4. A. Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern
lived aspects, remains a central aim of EAP
and environmental and architectural phe-
nomenology.
Notes 5. Borgmann, Crossing, p. 88.
1. D. Seamon, Twenty Years of EAP, Envi- 6. Ibid. One revealing discussion of these
ronmental and Architectural Phenome-
nology 20, 3 (fall 2009): 3–5.
2. J. Malpas, Heidegger's Topology, Cam-
bridge: MIT Press, 2006, p. 29.
3. L. Grossman, Head Trip, Time Magazine,
Apr. 7, 2014, pp. 36–41; P. Rubin, Oculus 7. Ibid., p. 96.
Rift, Wired, June, 2014, pp. 78–95.
form a closed circle of researchers, profes-
sionals, or inquisitive readers. Rather, a bet-
ter image might be genuinely international
networks with many different sorts of link-
ages among members or of orbiting activi-
ties intersecting here and there. That is to
say, EAP is all about people with a certain
attitude or style as much as it is about the
environmental and architectural subject
matter. David Seamon and Margaret
Boschetti deserve full credit for helping so
many of us along the journey.
T hink of how the story of the last 25
years is a gathering and scattering of
participants who do not form anything like
a movement but, rather, facilitate a series of
movable rendezvous. Indeed, part of the
richness of what has happened is that many
particular “tribes” actually have little con-
tact with each other, or have in common a
few individuals who are related with what
are known as weak rather than strong ties.
In the beginning, there were “human-
istic” geographers attending to place: Yi-Fu
Tuan, Anne Buttimer, Ted Relph, and a
young David Seamon. A few theorists and
philosophers such as Christian Norberg-
Schulz, Karsten Harries, and a young Bob
7
Divide, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1992, pp. 87–102; also see A. Borgmann,
Holding on to Reality, Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1999.
four qualities is N. Friesen, Real vs. Vir-
tual Dissections: Brilliance and Transpar-
ency or Encumbrance and Disruption?
Environmental and Architectural Phe-
nomenology, 22, 2 (spring 2011): 6–10.
Mugerauer were attending to architecture.
These thinkers, however, were not con-
nected at first. For example, I was happy but
embarrassed to learn at a 1983 Society for
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
conference in St. Louis that Harries, beyond
his general work in aesthetics, had devel-
oped a sub-specialty of Rococo churches.
So off went the venture into uncharted
territory. Not surprisingly—though pleas-
antly surprising to us in each instance—we
did not “discover” other people, since they
were already there doing good work. But we
did discover what they were doing and ways
to connect more and more of us. The basic
move was to find venues for getting to-
gether, the master of which was Seamon, al-
ready performing the role he still does, for-
malized in EAP.
T he main problem was finding parent or-
ganizations whose conferences were
not so overly positivistic as to exclude other
approaches. Most of these venues were dis-
ciplinary, but an increasing number of
multi-disciplinary, environmentally or ar-
chitecturally focused organizations also ap-
peared. There were sessions for several
years at the American Association of Geog-
raphers (AAG), especially in the 1980s.
There was also teasing open a time and
place as part of the Society for Phenomenol-
ogy and the Human Sciences (SPHS) meet-
ings, beginning in the early 1980s and still
continuing, as well as the hospitable Inter-
national Human Science Research Confer-
ence (IHSRC).
Somewhat more problematic (because
in the heart of the beast), there have been a
long series of presentations at the Environ-
mental Design Research Association
(EDRA) from the mid-1980s. EDRA still
provides a venue, though some of us no
longer attend because, in many ways, a
hackneyed positivist critique still dominates
(EDRA was where I first met Ingrid Stefa-
novic and where the intrepid Seamon still
carries on). The International Association of
Person-Environment Studies (IAPS), the
European counterpart to EDRA (and more
receptive to phenomenology with col-
leagues such as Gilles Barbey) was a good
venue in the mid-1980s and following.
Architectural, urban, and design-ori-
ented work was regularly presented at the
Association of Collegiate Schools of Archi-
tecture (ACSA) conferences from the mid-
1980s onward and less often at the meetings
of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Planning (ACSP). Meanwhile, the blos-
soming field of architectural anthropology
was hospitable as seen in presentations at
the Built Form and Culture conferences in crossed paths. There are many individuals
the 1980s and the International Association and clusters with distinct trajectories, aware
for the Study of Traditional Environments of each other but not focally working to-
(IASTE) from 1990 to the present. gether. To note just a few, and here neces-
Philosophers independently carried sarily leave many others out (the remedy for
on, in large part because of the growing in- which is the terrific now-digital EAP ar-
terest in environmental issues and regular chive!) I still have not met face to face with
presentations at the philosophical “mother Jeff Malpas, Michael Jackson, or James
ship” of SPEP in the late 1980s and early Weiner, have only intersected once with Da-
1990s. In the early 2000s, another sub-set oflibor Vesely, though with Juhani Pallasmaa
continentally-oriented researchers founded and Alberto Pérez-Gómez more often, and
the International Association for Environ- with Tim Ingold only last year.
mental Philosophy (IAEP), which continues My point in all this attention to meet-
to hold its meetings in conjunction with ings is that environmental and architectural
SPEP and SPHS. phenomenology is associated with a diverse,
Many phenomenologists, purged from only loosely connected, group of interesting
philosophy departments by analytic philos- people. One result is a richness that comes
ophy in the 1970s, had found other arenas in from diversity and occasional cross-fertili-
which to operate, including comparative lit- zation. That is the real story. Yes, content
erature. The International Association for matters, but it proceeds from looking, think-
Philosophy and Literature (IAPL) has been ing, and talking together about our shared
a two-decades-long site of exchange since world. While new people continuously have
the 1990s. Finally, there have been many found one or another via ongoing activities
“one of a kind” meetings focusing on topics and publications, what would have been
such as place, spirituality, technology, sus-much more random with many missed con-
tainability, ecology, landscape, regional nections has been focused and facilitated by
studies, and urbanism. EAP.
It is not too much to say that the wel-
A s I noted earlier, what is especially coming attitude prevailing among the peo-
striking is that, while there are some ple involved and promulgated by EAP has
people active in multiple arenas, almost no been a major force for good.
one participates in all. Indeed, even in the
complex networks elaborated in the various
conferences and meetings, not everyone

Human Being as Placed Being

Jeff Malpas
Malpas is Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania where he works across programs in Architecture, Geography, and
Philosophy. Two of his most recent volumes are Heidegger and the Thinking of Place (MIT Press, 2012); and the edited collection,
The Place of Landscape (MIT Press, 2011). Jeff.Malpas@utas.edu.au. © 2014 Jeff Malpas.

A
lthough I am certainly not opposed
to a phenomenological characteri-
zation, I think of my own work as,
for the most part, “topological” or “topo-
graphical” rather than “phenomenological.”
Yet I also take phenomenology, along with
hermeneutics, to be essentially topological
in character, a point I have argued for else-
where (e.g., Place and Experience, 1999). It
is precisely this topological character that
seems to me to underpin the connections be-
tween architecture, environment, and phe-
nomenology that EAP has been concerned
to explore over the past 25 years.
One problem with some contemporary
phenomenology, however, is that it seems to
lose sight of this topological orientation
(and so also to lose sight of its properly tran-
scendental character). In fact, the continuing
contemporary significance of phenomenol-
ogy seems to me to reside neither in its cog-
nitive scientific relevance nor in its possible
connection with aspects of analytic thought,
but rather in the way that issues of place and
environment arise as central to phenomeno-
logical inquiry, even if they are sometimes
obscured within it. This is also why phe-
nomenology remains important to my own
work, in spite of my ambivalence about

8
whether that work is itself to be understood Human being is thus placed being. Such a task requires a mode of phe-
as primarily phenomenological in character. This is important for architectural and envi- nomenology that speaks to the phenomena
ronmental thinking, since it is our own em- in their immediacy, their singularity—and

I f phenomenology is described as that beddedness in place and the embeddedness in their everydayness. Such a phenomenol-
mode of philosophical inquiry directed of place in us that underpins and should ogy would be a phenomenology of the
primarily at an understanding of “phenom- guide environmental care and concern as everyday, but also a phenomenology at-
ena”—at an understanding of “what ap- well as architectural design and practice. tuned to the place of the everyday and the
pears” or “is present”—then its topological Greater environmental attentiveness is everydayness of place. To some extent, it is
orientation is already evident in the fact that likely to be achieved only through greater a phenomenology already present, though
every appearing or presencing is itself a attentiveness to our own human being— less in the pages of Husserl and Heidegger
“taking place.” It is this “taking place,” which here means our being in and through than in the articulation of the placed charac-
which is bounded as well as open and dy- place—and the same holds for good archi- ter of experience that is to be found in much
namic, that grounds the idea of topology as tectural and design practice (which is also contemporary architecture, art, music, film
philosophical. Such “taking place” is the why so much contemporary architecture and literature, as well as in many forms of
proper topos of the phenomena—the topos falls short as architecture). Moreover, in personal reflection and practice.
of appearing or presencing. emphasizing the environmental here as tied Perhaps the turn toward a more explic-
The significance of such a topos is not to place, what is also emphasized is a con- itly topological sensibility, even in conjunc-
affected by shifts in the character of place ception of the environmental that itself en- tion with phenomenology, also requires a
and space that supposedly characterize con- compasses the architectural (as the architec- turn toward a closer engagement with ordi-
temporary globalized modernity. We can tural itself overlaps with the environmental). nary life as well as popular culture—to an
say that even globalized modernity appears On such a topological or topographic understanding of topos in its most prosaic
only in and through specific topoi—global- conception, the environmental is not merely forms as that out of which any more devel-
ization is something that occurs only in and that pertaining to the “natural” or “unbuilt” oped engagement, including with environ-
through particular places, in respect of spe- (to that which is other than the human), nor mental questions, must arise.
cific things, localities, and practices. Under- is the architectural about only the “cultural”

T
standing globalization thus requires an un- or the “built,” but instead both refer us to the his understanding of phenomenology is
derstanding of place—and this is all the entirety of the surrounding world as it is also one that brings with it a fundamen-
more so, given the way in which one of the brought to focus in place, and that therefore tal concern with the ethical—where ethics is
characteristic features of globalization (and includes the built and the unbuilt, the cul- itself already oriented toward the question
of technological modernity more generally) tural and the natural, the urban and the wild. of our placed being in the world. Here place
is to obscure its own placed character. In this way, the genuinely intercon- brings together the ethical with the ontolog-
In this respect, too much of the con- nected and interdependent character of the ical, so that the two are seen as properly and
temporary discourse around globalization world is brought into focus as an intercon- inextricably bound together.
and modernity, even supposedly “critical” nectedness and interdependence that is both Our being placed does not merely de-
discourse, fails to engage with the real char- encompassing and yet also concentrated; termine our being, it is our being, and as
acter of modernity, since the conceptual that is complex and multiple and yet comes such it is also that which is the foundation
framework it employs (typically that of un- to salience in the singularity of place. for our being as ethical—it is in being

R
bounded flow and connection) is precisely ecognizing the topological character of placed that we are given over to the question
the framework of modernity's own self-rep- phenomenology means recognizing its of our proper relation to ourselves, to others,
resentation—and so also the self-represen- environmental and architectural relevance, and to the world.
tation of contemporary corporate capitalism and yet this may also be thought to bring It is thus that environmental concern,
and bureaucratic-technocratic governance. with it a need to rethink the character of phe- as a concern with the world and our relation
nomenology. Although it does not do away to it as that is articulated in and through

T he topos of the phenomena is a topos in with phenomenology as a mode of philo- place and places, itself arises as a concern
which we are always involved. As such, sophical analysis and description, it sug- that is both ethical and ontological. Such a
the inquiry into topos, the turn back to place, gests that phenomenology has an additional concern has been clearly evident through the
is also a turn back to ourselves. It is, I would task that is directed toward the uncovering pages of EAP. Thanks, as well as congratu-
say, a turn back to the human (although a and articulation of our everyday involve- lations to David Seamon and to EAP on 25
turn that also puts the human in question— ment in the world, as that involvement oc- years of sustained engagement with the is-
puts ourselves in question). The mode of be- curs in and through the places in which our sues at stake here—25 years of sustained en-
ing that is the human is most succinctly lives are embedded, and as it brings those gagement with phenomenology, with envi-
characterized as that mode of being that is places, and the wider environmental con- ronment, with architecture, and with place.
always turned toward topos—even when it text, with all its complexities and interde-
seems to be turned away. pendencies, to light.

9
Going Deep in Place
Eva-Maria Simms
Simms is a Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. She has written The Child in the World (Wayne State
Univ. Press, 2008). This essay originally appeared in the on-line journal Vox Populi (http://voxpopulisphere.com) and is used with
permission. simms@duq.edu. © 2014 Eva-Maria Simms.
F rom ten until I was twenty-eight years
old, I spent none of my birthdays at
home. August was always the time
for travel: my tenth birthday, in a tent at a
girl scout summer camp; my eleventh, in a
convalescent home; my thirteenth, free and
unsupervised in Salzburg; my fifteenth, ac-
companying an elderly great aunt to Wales;
my seventeenth, as a maid in a dilapidated
hotel on a North Sea island; my eighteenth,
in London; my nineteenth, in Prague; my
twentieth, high up in the Alps; my twenty-
first, a Sunday a few days after arriving as a
graduate student in Dallas, Texas; my
twenty-second, at a wedding in Paolo Alto;
and so on.
I left my home in Germany to have my
American adventure—without knowing I
would never return to live in Germany, apart
from visiting my parents a few weeks most
summers. When I was a young woman, it
seemed to be a sign of my destiny that I
awoke on that special day every year in an-
other place, with other people, and without
a birthday party. It made Salzburg, London,
and Prague special. To touch the hearts of
those places, I made sure I took my solitary
“birthday walk” on beaches or through the
mazes of city streets.
My husband Michael and I moved to a
house on Mt. Washington after we came to
Pittsburgh. “We have travelled far on this
mountain,” he wrote in a poem for me after
our son was born. Over the past 25 years,
that line has captured for me a different way
of travelling. We have lived on the same
mountain since 1987. We have walked the
same streets, have seen children grow up,
witnessed funeral processions, saw old
houses fall and new ones built, and have
looked out over the Monongahela Valley
too many times to count.
I still travel to Europe every year, but the Slowly, year after year, I have come to animal fellows from years back, and you
direction of my journey has gradually
“travel far on this mountain,” which has be-
changed. It all began with birds. Our back
porch had a canvas awning pulled up in win-
ter, and every spring a pair of rosy house
finches nested in the folds. A pair of mourn-
ing doves has been recycling a nest on the
come more varied and full. My travels do
not go far away anymore, but they go deep.
Going deep in a place means to under-
stand its rhythms and its web of beings: the
ledge above our back door for more than a change of light over the rivers at dawn, the
decade, and they are probably by now the migration of birds, the first toad lilies of the
offspring of the offspring. I have to make spring, the ebb and flow of human and non-
sure every year that we do not use the porch human beings who are my neighbors. I im-
too early in the season because, as soon as agine that women in hunter-gatherer socie-
the door opens, the mama bird goes whoosh ties had deep relationships with their places,
and flies away in panic. Every year the same and they cultivated a particular knowledge
visitors: They come and stay for a few of life in one place. That knowledge was in-
weeks, their babies fledge, and they move scribed into their bones: the legs that walked
on to other places when the season ends. and the hands that touched. Their ears un-
Birds, I noticed, don’t just fly around derstood the cries of animals; their eyes
all the time. They make their home in one knew how to see; their hearts welcomed the
place, and they live there for the season, just
turning of the seasons, even if they were
like we do. They share this place above the cold, wet, and uncomfortable.
Monongahela River with us. They are our As to the stones under us—the bones
neighbors, which means that they are our of the earth—how rarely do we actually see
nah-gibur (Old High German), our “near- them here in Western Pennsylvania! They
dwellers.” are hidden under layers of leaf mold and
I began to notice other birds returning concrete, but sometimes you find a clearing
over the years: the chimney swifts who in the woods where the beautiful red sand-
come in May; the magnolia warblers, who stone juts from a cliff. Or one notices shiny
pass through around the same time; the scar- jet coal pieces sometimes flung across old
let tanagers, who flash through the woods in trails. The story is that, during the great de-
June. Early May is the best time, because, pression, people would gather these coal
through the still sparse leaves, you can see fragments and burn them in their stoves.
the ruby crowned kinglets in the thickets. Going deep means to look at the stone
My favorite neighbors, the coopers’ hawks, and ask: What is under there? How did it
refurbish their nest and engage in their come about? How strange to notice that all
courtship dance. our hills have the same height! But you learn
they are not hills at all: In this part of Penn-
M y daily walks through the neighbor- sylvania, there are only valleys carved from
hood streets and woods are now over- a plateau by glacial-melt water during the
laid with a soundscape of birdsong. I slowly last ice ages.
learned to notice and differentiate the terri-
torial melody of the wood thrushes or the
warning chips of the chickadees. They don’t True ecological awareness means to go
deep in a natural place. You begin to
seem to mind me—I guess I am nothing understand its fabric or relationships and
compared to a feral cat or a red-tailed hawk. how it changes in time. You remember the
10
look forward to their return and the birth of
their babies.
You care for this place because you
have walked it, and it lives in your muscles
and bones. You care for this place because
you have seen and scented and heard it. This
place lives in your senses as a differentiated,
perceptual landscape. It lives in your
memory and it lives in your thinking be-
cause it asks you questions, and you search
for answers.
This place lives in your dreams as the
landscape of your soul, and you are here to
be its witness. Your breath is of it and in
you, and you give it back. After the last,
your body will be of it, and your soul will
pour itself over the river valleys. You are fi-
nally able to read the braille of the air cur-
rents as they carry other winged friends to-
ward their other homes.

Viewing Two Sides

Sue Michael
Artist and photographer Sue Michael is a candidate for the degree of Master of Visual Art (research) at the University of South
Australia’s School of Art, Architecture and Design, in Adelaide. Her master’s thesis is entitled, “Mytho-Poetic Domestic Settings of
the Mid North of South Australia: Painting Humanistic Geography.” Featured illustrations in this EAP issue are Michael’s paintings
of a home in Booleroo Centre, a small town (pop. 585) in the Southern Flinders Ranges region of South Australia, about 175 miles
north of Adelaide—see front, back, and next pages. More of her work can be viewed at www.behance.net/soomichael. smichael@west-
net.com.au. Text and paintings © 2014 Sue Michael.

northern reaches of South Australia’s Mid

A
ustralian historian and writer Paul
Carter (2010) has explored the spa-
tial history of Australia and has pro-
vided pathways for me, as an artist, to fol-
low: to meshes of local complexity, the
clearly invisible, the breached common-
place, and story lines that can be traced back
to unheard voices. Carter offers an approach
that remains open to negotiation, where the
human, non-human, cosmic, and local are
all together.
Local South Australian knowledge,
now gone, was collected by Robert Bruce in
his 1902 Reminiscences of an Old Squatter
[1]. He wrote:
I used to wonder why those rodents
[“suahs,” or stick-nest rats] would heap up
a big cartload of sticks in the shape of a hay-
cock, to roof their nests, when a half a bar-
rowful might have fully met all require-
ments… those little chaps always had plenty
of company, for whenever I happened to
drop a lighted match on the windward side
of their woodheaps I always noticed that in
a short time afterwards a pretty equally
mixed assemblage of suahs and snakes
would leave…Those suahs have long since
disappeared from the South Australian set-
tled country (quoted in Barker et al. 1995).
The stick-nest rat’s generous domestic
practices, sharing with other species in an
arid climate, have permeated my thoughts as
a topos, a schema, particularly in relation to
y European pioneering ancestors had
strong ties to local Ngadjuri, and I be-
Mid North snakes’ poisonous venom. The lieve my family quickly learned to love the
North have different geographical condi-
tions from the more popular local tourist
destinations of the Barossa, Clare Valley,
and the Flinders Ranges. Long lines of an-
cient hills run north to south, sheltering flat
plains usually tinder dry in summer. Pepper-
mint box gums once covered the undulating
land, but these trees have given way to pas-
toral leases.
There is very little surface water, and
the unpredictable climate brings flash
floods, bushfires, snow, fierce wind, low
winter temperatures, and unspeakable sum-
mer heat where snow may have rested a few
months before. Drought is a major shaping
force, and the landscape is dotted with old
bores and homestead ruins that tell of the ge-
ographical realities (Williams 1974; Meinig
1963).
First-nation culture suggests the local
landscape was generous, and the native
Ngadjuri people lived successfully in the re-
gion before battles over water and land ac-
cess began with European pastoralists (War-
rior 2005). The Ngadjuri barely survived,
after a late nineteenth-century decimation of
their numbers and culture through massa-
cres, disease, and displacement. Their
strong ties to the land, incorporating cos-
mology, language, and knowledge of local
medicinal plants, have mostly been lost.
M
region as the Ngadjuri did. The sanctity of
all life and the skills to make do with what
resources were available to adapt to a harsh
life are foundations for my family’s culture,
and I feel this directly links to Mid North
geographical influences. A spiritual dimen-
sion runs through my visual-art research and
becomes clearer after each visit to the area
as I learn to interpret perceived yet unseen
forces—voices from my family’s past; and
Aboriginality, with its alternative intelli-
gence, which has left traces wherever I go.
If life was difficult in this region, there
still seems to be a bias for life and successful
place making. It is a personal journey I take
with a heuristic approach to research, trying
to see settlement through the eyes of my
great grandparents: how they made happy
homes, full of creative projects, guests, sim-
ple comforts, and laughter.
My family’s Mid North imagination
was shaped by isolation, poverty, and a dif-
ficult climate, with death close by. Though
few of us stayed on as farmers and shop-
keepers, we learned a beautiful way to relate
to the earth, to animals, and to each other.
The land is still so calming and soothing to
be in. I have heard First Nation people say it
is a very powerful land.
F rom visiting the region now, I still see
signs of a different way of thinking. Eu-
ropean settlers had no clear rules in the early
days and had to make their own sense of
place. Even in today’s “modernized”
homes, I observe signposts of this different

11
sort of intelligence: special plants are given
indoor berths or places under the verandah;
garden seating allows enjoyment of the nat-
ural environment via numerous orienta-
tions; patterns of outside shade continue into
house interiors; cupboards and cases are
filled with the gifts from gardens; lounge
rooms with recliners and knee rugs afford
sociability, mutual care, and gathering to-
gether via clustering.
These observations parallel what thea-
ter director Jonathan Miller says of home:
I actually think that the function of a great
deal of art should be to redirect your atten-
tion to things you would otherwise overlook.
It’s the overlooked, the negligible, the disre-
garded, the abandoned and the derelict that
is actually where the payload is (Cliff 2007).
Miller’s domestic observation points
toward a central premise of my art: that na-
ture’s powerful presence is felt intensely to
“enter” the home. Over time, locals have
come to accept the presence of the land-
scape, enjoying small mercies, adapting and
using creative problem-solving, enhancing
home spaces to have a better life, without
focusing on fear.
I see this pattern in my family’s homes
and many other Mid North dwellings. When
I peruse online real-estate photos from the
region, I note how the aesthetics reflect the
surrounding landscape: leaf-litter carpets
and minimal yet atmospheric rooms painted
the color of coral blush to match the soil.
Sometimes, an entire house is painted aqua
in a defiant “cooling” gesture.
Dwelling features like these are all
positive signs of a nourishing living in an
unforgiving region where you can die of
thirst, if the silence or deadly brown snakes
don’t get to you first. There is so much to
think about from alternative points of view.
Note
1. “Squatter” is a term used for earliest Austral-
ian pastoralists who used land before claims and
boundaries were formalized.
References
Barker, S., McCaskill, M., & Ward, B., 1995.
Explore the Flinders Ranges. Adelaide:
Royal Geographical Society of Australasia.
Carter, P., 2010. Ground Truthing: Explorations
in a Creative Region. Crawley, Western
Australia: UWA Press.
Cliff, S., 2007. Home. NY: Artisan.
Meinig, D. W., 1963. On the Margins of the
Good Earth. London: Murray.
Warrior, F., 2005. Ngadjuri: Aboriginal People
of the Mid North Region of South Australia.
Prospect Hill, SA: South Australian Studies
of Society, Environment Council, Ngadjuri
Walpa Juri Lands, and Heritage Association.
Williams, M., 1974. The Making of the South
Australian Landscape. NY: Academic Press.

Left: Sue Michael, The New Car, 60 x 130 cm,

2014.

Left: Sue Michael, Booleroo Kitchen, 20 x 38

cm, 2013. Michael writes: “These simple do-
mestic scenes point to neat, tidy, practical
ways, with all that you need close at hand. The
red dust and drought do impinge, but like a
sweeping of the floor, life begins anew, in its
own time.”

12
Giving Space to Thoughts on Place
Dennis Skocz
Skocz is a philosopher and independent scholar who uses phenomenology to pursue thematic interests in media, environment, and
economics. His articles have appeared in Analecta Husserliana and other philosophical journals. skocz@verizon.net. © 2014 Dennis
E. Skocz.
H ow better to celebrate the 25th anni-
versary of Environmental and Ar-
chitectural Phenomenology than to
reflect on the enduring importance of EAP’s
aims? We humans are spatial to the core, not
so much “lost in space” as “found in place.”
The public spaces in which we speak and act
and the private spaces from which we
emerge and to which we return each day
form the two domains within which and be-
tween which the time of our lives plays out.
Space and time are less Kant’s a priori forms
of intuition than they are that lived unity that
everyday speaking calls “taking place.”
Place—public and private—is “built into”
who we are as it is “built up” in our archi-
tecture.
My first ambition was to be an archi-
tect, and my dissertation in philosophy was
on private property. In recent courses, I have
called upon my classes to think open-end-
edly on philosopher Hannah Arendt’s un-
derstanding of the ancient Greek distinction
of the public and private as it bears on our
lives today as selves and citizens. It seems
that the fate of the public and private rises
and falls in tandem and that, in a trend of
long-making and uncertain outcome, each
has become less distinct. The result is a
lived topography more uniform and less hu-
man.
I put the following as a hypothesis to
EAP readers: Sociology as it developed in
the nineteenth century was the expression
and product of world-transforming dis-
placements brought on by modernity. I in-
clude within the scope of this hypothesis all
the Great Grandfathers of sociology but
think now especially of German sociologist
Ferdinand Tönnies and his distinction of
Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, often trans-
lated as society and community (Tönnies
1887/1957). Tönnies’ rendering of commu-
nity may be somewhat romantic, but soci-
ety, Gesellschaft, stands first and foremost
for the marketspace that developed with
capitalism. Tönnies gives us much to think
about in regard to social interaction medi-
ated by markets and the “spacings” that en-
sue therefrom. In any case, I invite my col-
leagues to scan the founding literature of so-
ciology noting how much dis-placing and
re-spacing figures in the thinking of the
early sociologies.
L et me shift now from the marketspace
of global capitalism to the “home
front.” Here, I would propose to EAP read-
ers a thought experiment. Imagine that you
are a well compensated, white-collar worker
or manager or executive or even Wall Street
financier—or perhaps best for our purposes,
a successful Willy-Lohman traveling sales-
man. Every night you check into a first-class
hotel. Your every wish is satisfied by your
ability to select your accommodation and
the attentive care provided by the hotel staff
and other workers in the hospitality indus-
try. Architecture and interior design work
their magic to create a guest experience with
“no (unpleasant) surprises.” Your laundry is
always done for you, beds made, meals pre-
pared and brought to your room if you like.
No need to water the plants in the room or
care for the grounds. Your family can stay
with you. Baby-sitting and pet care are pro-
vided.
The one condition in this thought ex-
periment is that you cannot stay long in any
one location. Whatever you brought with
you into a room or suite must leave with
you. You cannot modify your rooms, though
of course you can move to a hotel that better
suits your changing aesthetic requirements.
If someone were to ask you where you
might be in three years, you would not be
able to say. The material conditions of exist-
ence in this scenario are intended to rule out
any negative judgment regarding one’s cir-
cumstances based on conditions relating to
13
discomfort, pain, fear, intrusion, disruption,
housekeeping responsibilities, or anger with
poor service. Would such an arrangement
leave something to be desired? Would there
be a basis for calling any place in the suc-
cession of places one occupies over a life-
time one’s own—in other than a very tem-
poral sense? What would be missing for you
to say, “This is my place,” and mean it? And
how important to you would it be to have
whatever it took for you to call a place a
room of your own?
The thought experiment framed here
can be seen phenomenologically as an im-
aginative variation intended to achieve ei-
detic insight into the essence of “owness”
or, more specifically, into the nature of a
place one calls one’s own. The bigger, fol-
low-on question—one I have returned to re-
currently since writing my dissertation—is
whether having a place of one’s own is a
constitutive dimension of human being-in-
the-world.
Would we be less human without a
place to call our own? Is the reflection initi-
ated above so culturally embedded that its
relevance to other humans elsewhere is
questionable? Or is the challenge to own-
ness from elsewhere—in this case, a place
somewhere else, someone else’s place—al-
ready itself testimony to the importance of
place to our being-in-the-world? Is a divi-
sion of places into those we find familiar or
strange testimony to a social landscape
zoned by mine and thine, ours and yours? Is
such a social-cultural-historical environ-
ment as much a part of human being-in-
world as embodiment and speech?
I n his list of potential discussion questions
for essays in this special twenty-fifth-an-
niversary issue of EAP, David Seamon asks
whether phenomenology can contribute to a
politics and ideology of place. I think the an-
swer is “yes.” For Virginia Wolf, a “room of
one’s own” meant a place for women in the
world of literature, politics, and ideas. The
book of that title is a manifesto of the femi-
nist movement. Contested spaces are drivers
of conflict. Holy lands and terra sancta en-
ter into secular and political struggle and
warfare. The global phenomenon of migra-
tion and refugee movement is a narrative of
dis-placement and finding one’s place again
in the world.
A few years ago, EAP offered me the
opportunity to suggest how a micro-phe-
nomenology of living in “climate-con-
trolled” dwellings can shape or distort our
relationship to the natural environment out-
side (Skocz 2010). Built space can isolate us
from the vagaries of weather and climate or
Place, Philosophy, and Non-Philosophy
Bruce Janz
Janz is Professor of Humanities in the Philosophy Department at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He is also graduate
faculty with the Texts and Technologies PhD program, and director of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research. He has written
Philosophy in an African Place (Lexington Books, 2009). Bruce.janz@ucf.edu © 2014 Bruce Janz.
M y partner Lisa is fond of saying
that we go into our academic ar-
eas based on what confuses and
bewilders us. She means this somewhat fa-
cetiously when she thinks about her own
area, creative writing, and adjacent areas
such as rhetoric and literature. She suspects
her area draws people who are baffled by
basic human communication and coherent
narrative.
She’s probably right. I can say that I
was drawn to studying place in part because
it baffled me. I grew up on the Canadian
prairies, and Saskatchewan is full of writers
and artists who feel the need to explain the
mystical draw of wide spaces to detractors
in the rest of Canada. There is a strong at-
tachment to place where I come from, but
while I love where I’m from, I didn’t quite
understand why that attachment existed.
It’s not that I couldn’t see the beauty
or understand the subtle colors and sounds.
I still remember the smell of the wheat har-
vest in August and the crispness of hoarfrost
in the brilliant winter sun. W. O. Mitchell’s
Who Has Seen The Wind? was read by every
school child, and it both evoked a feature of
the demands on natural resources required
to maintain a comfortable living space. Our
buildings can effect an unconscious and po-
tentially harmful suspension or epoché not
so much from the natural attitude as from
nature itself. Conversely, there is, to answer
another of Seamon’s questions, an architec-
ture that makes for better placemaking, one
that connects us to our natural surroundings
not only aesthetically but also thoughtfully,
grounding us in the material conditions of
our existence.
EAP is a record of its readers’ and con-
tributors’ ongoing efforts at “getting into
place” and demonstrates the value of phe-
nomenological reflection toward that aim.
It is itself a place for coming to terms with
the prairies we supposed that only we could
understand, and also the invisibility of that
feature. We felt like we had a secret, privi-
leged knowledge of that place.
And yet, when it came time to go off
to university in Ontario, I didn’t look back.
It didn’t get into my bones the way I saw
that it did for others. It was the new place
that I wanted. Was I “differently-abled,”
lacking a place-sense that others possessed
and so much the poorer for it? Maybe. I
went into philosophy, after all, notoriously
the discipline least concerned about place, at
least classically. Didn’t philosophers rise as
quickly as possible to the level of the uni-
versal, and leave all those messy particulars
for other disciplines?
When philosophers did think about
place, it was much like how Hegel thought
about “individual”—as a universal concept
that attached itself to all particular things.
Place was like that—everything had one,
and therefore the philosophical task was to
consider this shared feature of all particular-
ities. I suppose my attraction to philosophy
should not have been a surprise—in high
school science, I also gravitated toward
14
place, a home for diverse, imaginative, and
timely phenomenology. Let me add my
words to congratulate and thank David Sea-
mon for initiating and sustaining an essen-
tial and continuing dialogue over the 25
years of EAP’s existence.
References
Skocz, D., 2010. Husserl’s Coal-Fired Phe-
nomenology: Energy and Environment
in an Age of Whole-House Heating and
Air-Conditioning. Environmental and
Architectural Phenomenology, 21, 2
(spring): 16–21.
Tönnies, F. 1887/1957. Community and So-
ciety. NY: Dover.
physics and away from biology, on the
grounds that physics seemed simpler to
me—just equations and laws. Biological en-
tities were messy—every one of them had a
new set of facts to know. Every one of them
was particular. Just like places.
W e know a lot about the philosophy of
place but little about the place of phi-
losophy or, rather, the places of philosophy.
We tend to think that philosophy has no
place, that the development of its concepts
is historical accident, which is not, of
course, susceptible to logical analysis and
therefore of little philosophical interest.
This perspective is evident even in pol-
icies from the American Philosophical As-
sociation concerning ethics. There are nu-
merous statements on aspects of philosophy
as a profession but few on the ethics of phi-
losophy itself. If we compare the APA state-
ments to other national academic organiza-
tions, such as the American Anthropological
Association, we find that those groups re-
flect on the ethics of the methods and prac-
tices of anthropologists qua anthropologists,
rather than anthropologists qua profession-
als or university members.
 The distinction is important, as it
points to an interesting gap within philoso-
phy. Despite supposedly “owning” the sub-
discipline of ethics, it is a study to be applied
largely outside of philosophy itself, rather
than inside. Why? Because ethics is about
how we act toward people and, in philoso-
phy, there are no people. Of course, there are
people engaged in philosophical activity,
but there are no people who are the subject
of philosophy. Concepts are thought to be
free-floating, without owners, without crea-
tors or audiences, and without place. So, the
APA does not have a policy on how those
concepts are obtained, or whether there is
some sort of intellectual property entitle-
ment to concepts, or what happens if a con-
cept is let loose on the world and helps or
harms someone.
Given what I’ve said, you might think
I’ve arrived home. Someone like me who
isn’t sure of his place attachment has found
the one discipline with no place. And yet,
this bothers me immensely. This cannot be
right. There must be a blind spot in the his-
tory and practice of philosophy. Nothing is
from nowhere. We aren’t gods, and we
shouldn’t pretend that we are. Philosophy
must be in place and be able to credibly con-
duct its activity knowing full well that it is
in place, and yet not have the self-reflection
on its own platiality change its activity into
something else. The platiality of philosophy
cannot turn it into literature, or politics, or
sociology. But how is this possible?
I n summer, 1990, I was in Nairobi, Kenya,
supporting my soon-to-be spouse in her
relief and development work. I visited the
philosophy department, and several more
times in the subsequent years, mostly to find
out what interested the philosophers in
Kenya. It became clear to me that, while
they were aware of and engaged in the wider
world of philosophy, they were also acutely
aware of the image that philosophy in Africa
had in the rest of the world.
Not only that. They were aware of the
concepts that they had to address, which had
currency in Kenyan society. These were not
free-floating concepts, available to anyone.
They were “live” in the sense that they were
taken seriously. Some were very traditional
concepts, such as those tied to witchcraft,
ancestor veneration, and so forth. Even the
most hard-nosed rationalists in the depart-
ment recognized that these concepts had
currency in society, even if they wished that
they didn’t. Some were concepts that had a
special significance in Kenya, given their
political and social climate—corruption, de-
mocracy, political representation, race.
These, of course, are issues in any place, but
they have a particular significance in a place
that has emerged recently from colonialism,
and has neo-colonial structures in place.
And, there was a discussion of method—
Kenyan philosopher Odera Oruka proposed
“sage philosophy,” an approach to African
philosophy that looked for philosophical
concepts and arguments among traditional
sages.
And so it became clear that African
philosophy was one site of philosophy that
necessarily needed to attend to its own
place. Unfortunately, that has often been un-
derstood as carving out a space from a recal-
citrant philosophical mainstream and assert-
ing ownership over a body of material.
That’s fine but doesn’t go far. It treats phil-
osophical space as if it was a map, and there
is finite intellectual property that must be
claimed. It was not yet a focus on philosoph-
ical place, the sort that leveraged existing
into new concepts adequate for Kenyan
lived experience. To understand what that
would look like, phenomenology is needed.
P henomenology, it should be said, has
had place embedded in its bones from
the beginning. Husserl, following Brentano,
started with intentionality, which enabled
him to move from an empirical investigation
of the world (largely placeless) to an exam-
ination that took seriously the standing and
experience of the perceiver. Even if his goal
was universal experience, his starting point
was a version of human experience not gen-
eralized from the beginning. He had a notion
of the horizon, well before Gadamer. The
lived body and its experience in space was
central to understanding human experience.
Perhaps most importantly, phenome-
nology accepted that philosophy had to pay
attention to non-philosophy. I do not mean
non-philosophy in French philosopher
François Laruelle’s sense, which is a broad-
ening of philosophy (Laruelle 2010). I mean
that phenomenology takes seriously the
question of where philosophy comes from,
what its lifeblood is, and what its limits are
15
(or at least what the limits of its concepts
are).
Taking experience seriously means
that the conduit from the non-philosophical
to the philosophical was in the reflection on
the elements of that experience, not in some
description of the metaphysical structure of
the world, reflection on the mind of God, or
deduction from existing categories and con-
cepts. Phenomenology is philosophy, but it
is also method. That method is perhaps the
first to allow philosophy to become self-
conscious about its place and about the
meaning of place for thought. It is no longer
a philosophy of place but philosophy in
place, as well as philosophy which, for the
first time, sees place as a condition of
thought.
M any philosophical concepts and meth-
ods have become useful in a wide
range of disciplines. Sometimes that use is
explicitly recognized and sometimes, not.
Phenomenology has turned out to be ex-
traordinarily useful in resisting positivist
tendencies of those disciplines to reduce
place to data, as well as the modernist ten-
dency to abstract place into location or co-
ordinates (Janz 2005). Even as it provides
the conversion of non-philosophy into phi-
losophy, it also allows (for example) anthro-
pologists to move from non-anthropology to
anthropology without simply imposing a
theoretical structure on the observable
world (as happens with modernist forms of
anthropology such as functionalism).
We might suppose that the non-philos-
ophy that philosophy would be interested in
would be things like myth, folk belief, or
tradition. We might further include things
like the passions, art, religion in general, and
so forth. All of those have been the subject
of philosophical thought, at least to the ex-
tent that the philosophical task has been
seen as one of determining demarcation be-
tween what can be reasoned about and what
cannot (e.g., Kant)
But there is more than that. The natural
world is non-philosophy, while at the same
time, if Deleuze and others are right (and I
suspect they are), it is also a place that
pushes and jogs us into new ways of con-
ceptualizing it. We see the alien nature of
the “olfactory poems” of dogs in the misty
morning field (to quote Aldo Leopold) and
realize a legibility to the world that has an
effect on us while being at the far edges of
our experience. Place is phenomenology’s
attention to the “blooming buzzing confu-
sion” of particularity and its commitment to
the notion that the world is always already
meaningful, while at the same time also
strange, opaque, and contradictory.
Phenomenology is not the only philo-
sophical approach taking seriously the bor-
der between non-philosophy and philoso-
phy. We can find this question raised by
many 20th-century thinkers, in one way or
another. It is remarkable, though, when you
start tracing it back, how much even think-
ers fairly hostile to phenomenology are, in
fact, indebted to it. Deleuze, for instance, of-
ten seen as diverging significantly from phe-
nomenology, can be seen to be working out
a phenomenological project, at least if Hus-
serl’s later generative phenomenology is the
model (Hughes 2008).
Philosophy, I think, exists wherever
you find it. It is disciplinarily within a set of
conversations and questions that stretch
back through time and space. But it is also
Can there be a Phenomenology of Nature?
Janet Donohoe
Donohoe is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton, Georgia. She has just published Remembering
Places: A Phenomenological Study of the Relationship between Memory and Place (Lexington Books, 2014). jdonohoe@westga.edu.
© 2014 Janet Donohoe.
P henomenology has traditionally been
understood to focus on universal
structures of consciousness that make
experience possible. Many thinkers suggest
that this perspective makes nature merely a
correlate of consciousness, thus indicating
that nature could not possibly be universal
or structural. Other thinkers argue that this
understanding of phenomenology embraces
an anthropocentric viewpoint that under-
mines any intrinsic value of nature.
While these positions may be true on a
particular reading of phenomenology, I
would like to suggest here that a genetic
phenomenological account of nature allows
us to understand that there is nothing natural
about nature and that, in spite of nature’s
cultural embeddedness, there can be univer-
sal elements of our experiences of it. These
the process of making sense out of what al-
ready is meaningful for us. We experience
place as always already meaningful but also
as resisting meaning at the same time, as
having a kind of opacity as well as transpar-
ency. There is, after all, non-philosophy. We
take meaningful existence and interrogate it
in various ways, laying bare what is hidden.
At the same time, however, we provide a
conduit from non-philosophy to philosophy.
Phenomenological investigation exists in
both of those moments, both in the constitu-
tion of the world as meaningful place (in-
cluding the recognition of the limits of
meaning and the presence of non-philoso-
phy) and then in our reflective ability to in- References
terrogate that world.
Perhaps philosophy isn’t as placeless
as it first appeared.
S o I am still out of place. I think I proba-
bly always will be. I live in Orlando Laruelle, F., 2010. Philosophies of Differ-
Florida, and I keep thinking of Edward
Relph’s idea of “placelessness.” Placeless-
ness, alas, seems all too often to fit this
universal elements can only be discovered
through a genetic phenomenological ac-
count of experience of nature. The genetic
account is characterized by phenomenolog-
ical philosopher Edmund Husserl in his later
work as an asking back into the sedimented
layers of the natural attitude.
Seen in this way, genetic phenomenol-
ogy allows us to peel away layers of cultural
sedimentation that characterize our consti-
tution in the natural attitude, revealing the
way in which the facts of the natural attitude
are already laden with meaning but also rec-
ognizing that there is a fundamental, univer-
sal level of experience of nature that sup-
ports those cultural meanings. As Merleau-
Ponty explains in his 1960s lectures, “nature
is what has a meaning without this meaning
16
place—undifferentiated strip malls or the
“next big thing” to provide economic revi-
talization. Urban decay and homes where
the yard is mowed but where no one has
lived for years, under the theory that, if
something resembles a place, it will con-
tinue to be a place.
And yet, my very act of living here,
along with many others, means that this
place is intelligible, at least to me, at the
same time as it is mystifying. It is without
question non-philosophy. My colleagues in
Kenya have their version of non-philosophy
to grapple with, and I have mine.
Janz, B., 2005. Walls and Borders: The
Range of Place, City and Community 4,
1: 87–94.
Hughes, J., 2008. Deleuze and the Genesis
of Representation. NY: Continuum.
ence. NY: Continuum.
having been posed by thought” [1]. This po-
sition does not reduce nature to a cultural
construct because, ultimately, it views na-
ture not as a thing but as a ground and hori-
zon of experience itself.
T he difficulty is that many theorists want
to establish nature as something inde-
pendent of and “beyond” the experience of
nature. This perspective inclines toward a
conception of nature as a thing in itself land-
ing us back in a kind of Kantian position of
a “natural” realm that we cannot attain. Phe-
nomenology, on the other hand, has always
conceived of the natural world as not a thing
in itself but as a thing of experience. This
thing of experience is not thereby reduced to
subjective experience, pure and simple, be-
cause all experience is viewed as intersub-
jectively, historically, and culturally embed-
ded.
Phenomenologically, we also recog-
nize that there are both the pregiven and the
given that characterize any experience and
that allow us to speak of the constitution of
nature in that experience. Finally, we under-
stand that the constitution of nature is not
the same as the creation or production of na-
ture. As philosopher Ted Toadvine sug-
gested nearly 20 years ago,
The truth of the claim that nature simply is
nature as experienced is demonstrated pre-
cisely by the world, the world we know and
see all around us. This is the world of our
experience—none other. Any world with
which we intend to deal must come to us
through this very one [2].
A
nother misunderstanding about phe-
nomenology is in viewing phenomeno-
logical distinctions as separations. In any
experience, there is a constitutive act and
that which is given—these are two sides of
the same experience and they are distinct
but not separate. One cannot be without the
other. Nature cannot be without subject,
subject cannot be without nature. It is true
that if we focus upon consciousness as the
sole key to understanding experience then
nature becomes secondary. Husserlian ge-
netic phenomenology, however, begins with
the natural concept of the world. Husserl de-
scribes this as the lifeworld way into phe-
nomenology as opposed to his earlier Carte-
sian way. By beginning with the natural
concept of the world, we draw into question
the apodicticity of consciousness in favor of
the pregivenness of the world. In other
words, it is an acknowledgement that we are
always already aware of the world before
we consciously turn toward it in analysis or
reflection.
What we must investigate, then, is that
world of which we are always already
aware. What is its structure? How is it
pregiven, presupposed? What are the condi-
tions of constitution that make experience of
nature possible? This leads to an under-
standing of the constituting subject that is
lived-body, in-the-world, and a thoroughly
intersubjective meaning never separated off
from the natural world.
That world with which we begin and from
which subjectivity or consciousness can
never be separated is what Husserl called
the lifeworld. The lifeworld is the environ-
ing world, the surrounding world of our eve-
ryday sense that grounds any conception of
an objective scientific world. Does this
mean that lifeworld is subjective? Not for
Husserl. It is a false division to establish an
objective world over against subjectivity.
Instead, Husserl speaks of lifeworld as hav-
ing an essential structure that he calls the
lifeworld a priori.
This deeper conception of the life-
world includes the objective sciences as
well as the constituted cultural worlds of
homeworld and alienworld [3]. The life-
world is not just empirical sensuous experi-
ence. It includes ideas and scientific theories
and their results within it because it is the
pregiven, unthematized, natural world of
experience.
The general structures that Husserl
wants to focus upon are those elements of
the lifeworld that are bound to its relative
being as homeworld or alienworld; in other
words, those that cannot be separated off
from any particular cultural world, but that
are themselves not relative. These are the
lifeworld a priori. This universal lifeworld a
priori is distinct from an objective a priori
that has been established by the idealizing
sciences. The sciences are dismissive of
their own foundations within a lifeworld full
of presuppositions in favor of their univer-
sal, idealized, geometrized world.
Instead, Husserl is interested in the
common structure that all cultural worlds
share regardless of their layers of sedi-
mented cultural history. This lifeworld a pri-
ori is still a perceptual world whereas an ob-
jective lifeworld is not.
One of the ways to avoid the mistaken
separation of subject from world is to avoid
thinking of the lifeworld as an object. Life-
world is not something we can experience in
its wholeness. It is not something we can
grasp as an object, not even if we
acknowledge that it is an intersubjective ob-
ject.
This understanding still relies upon an
idea of the subject as absolute and every-
thing as relative to it—the subject as master
and commander of world. Instead, if we
think of lifeworld in terms of its transcen-
17
dental conditions for the possibility of expe-
rience of any homeworld or alienworld, we
come closer to what Husserl, in his later
work, means by the term [4]. Husserl ex-
plains:
There exists a fundamental difference be-
tween the way we are conscious of the world
and the way we are conscious of things or
objects (taken in the broadest sense, but still
purely in the sense of the life-world), though
together the two make up an inseparable
unity. Things, objects (always understood
purely in the sense of the life-world), are
‘given’ as being valid for us in each case (in
some mode or other of ontic certainty) but
in principle only in such a way that we are
conscious of them as things or objects
within the world-horizon [5].
The important term here is horizon,
which is not something that can ever be
made an object of experience but is never-
theless entailed in any experience, for all ex-
perience is horizonal. This means that the
horizon that is lifeworld is pregiven rather
than given, that it is the very condition of
any objects of world as being given. Be-
cause lifeworld is pregiven, it cannot be de-
scribed in the same way we might describe
a cultural homeworld or alienworld, as hav-
ing particular characteristics or a peculiar
sense. Rather, it is the very condition of the
possibility of sense, but which itself cannot
be made an object of sense. It is horizon and
ground of both culturally relative home-
worlds and alienworlds.
To think of lifeworld not as object but
as horizon is to recognize it as a way in
which something is experienced or revealed.
That which is presupposed in the constitu-
tion of anything at all is the pregiven life-
world as horizon of such constitution. It is
about a style of constitution of which we are
unaware and which remains unthematized
because it is the very condition of constitu-
tion of a cultural world and, as horizon of
constitution, cannot be brought to presence
itself. That lifeworld horizon is at the same
time a ground of every experience of home-
world or alienworld, since it entails the
world history of earth that belongs to every
people of earth.
S
o what accounts for our sense that nature
exists independently of us and is not our
human construction? I would suggest here
that nature, insofar as it is given, makes pos-
sible the sense that it is not simply a matter
of our constitution. Givenness of anything
of experience is what challenges us or calls
us forth into the experience. A thing draws
our attention, asks for our focus upon it, or
makes itself felt in the background of a con-
stitutional activity. We do not come up with
experience out of whole cloth.
The importance of a phenomenology
of nature comes precisely from this particu-
lar vantage point that phenomenology
makes possible. It is the vantage point that
allows for the theorist to see herself as al-
ways involved in the world and responding
to the world rather than separating herself
from the world and making that world an
object.
A phenomenology of nature also al-
lows us to recognize that, in spite of differ-
ences of homeworld or alienworld, there are
fundamental structures of lifeworld
pregiven in any worldly givenness. Nature
is never object to my subject. Rather, we are
intertwined in such a fundamental way that
I can respond to the call to attentiveness to
The Phenomenology of Betweenness
Encountering Nature’s Wholeness
Mark Riegner
Riegner is a Professor of Environmental Studies at Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona. His research interests embrace understand-
ing form and pattern in animals from a phenomenological perspective within the contexts of ecology and evolutionary dynamics. He
is also interested in the history and philosophy of science. mriegner@prescott.edu © 2014 Mark Riegner.
When something has acquired a form, it metamorphoses immediately to a new one. If we wish to arrive at some living perception of
nature, we ourselves must remain as quick and flexible as nature and follow the example she gives.
W hether we observe a natural phe-
nomenon on a relative micro-
scale (e.g., a sprouting spring
flower) or on a macro-scale (e.g., an oak for-
est through the seasons), it is evident that
transformation underlies all things. While
many transformations are gradual and im-
perceptible—consider the growth of a pine
tree—many others are abrupt and even star-
tling, such as a butterfly emerging from its
nature that allows me to recognize my em-
beddedness within a pregiven nature, while
at the same time acknowledging my unique
role in the renewal and critique of the values
that are passed along through any response
to nature.
O nce we begin thinking of policy-mak-
ing or implementation, we tend to
leave phenomenology behind and to take on
the instrumental, reductive approach as
masters of nature that we recognize theoret-
ically to be problematic. How can phenom-
enology hold us to account? What renewal
and critique requires is an understanding of
traditional ways of thinking and responding
to nature that establish our role as masters of
nature, as the ones who can put things right.
Critique requires of us that we draw that ap-
proach into question by attempting as far as
possible to expose the pregiven elements of
our constitution and attempt to move for-
ward with a new kind of thinking.
What a genetic phenomenology of na-
ture can offer, then, is a partner to the more
empirical, concrete sciences that are focused
on environmental issues, which are issues of
world and nature. In allowing us to peel
—J. W. von Goethe (quoted in Miller 1988, p. 64)
chrysalis. Underlying these disparate exam-
ples is the recognition that change takes
place in a temporal dimension—i.e., change
occurs over various time spans.
We can, however, extend our observa-
tions to an apparently stationary object, say
a wildflower on the edge of a trail, and ask
whether there is evidence of change across
a spatial dimension. In other words, does the
organism, in the moment, offer us a picture
18
away sedimented layers of sense, genetic
phenomenology helps to reveal the presup-
positions of our everyday approach to the
natural world and, in so doing, leaves us pre-
pared for a process of renewal and critique.
Notes
1. M. Merleau-Ponty, La Nature: Notes,
cours du Collège de France (Paris: Edi-
tions du Seuil, 1995) p. 19, p. 20; as cited
by Renaud Barbaras, “Merleau-Ponty
and Nature,” Research in Phenomenol-
ogy, vol. 31 (2001) p. 29.
2. T. Toadvine, “Naturalizing Phenomenol-
ogy” Philosophy Today, vol. 44 (1999),
p. 126.
3. J. Donohoe, Remembering Places (NY:
Lexington, 2014), pp. 12–20.
4. For more on the earlier notion of life-
world as object in Husserl, see A. Stein-
bock, Home and Beyond (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern Univ. Press, 1995), pp.
98–102.
5. E. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sci-
ences and Transcendental Phenomenol-
ogy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ.
Press, 1970), p. 143.
of transformation among its various parts
and structures?
Furthermore, if we gaze, for example,
into a tide pool, and we note the differently
shaped shells of the various snail species,
we can ask: What is it that changes from one
form to another? What form elements shift
(e.g., height of spire, number of whorls,
number and distinctiveness of ribs) and to
what degree do they change?
 As I hope to show, these are not idle
questions but necessary first steps of a phe-
nomenological method that can lead us to a
cognitive experience of wholeness ex-
pressed within and among living organisms.
The pioneer of the particular phenom-
enological path I outline here is the influen-
tial poet, playwright, and naturalist J. W.
von Goethe (1749–1832), who developed a
way of science centered on keen, penetrat-
ing observation (Amrine et al. 1987; Sea-
mon and Zajonc 1998; Bortoft 1996, 2012;
Holdrege 2013; Riegner 2013).
Here, I do not explicate the epistemo-
logical underpinnings of the breadth and
depth of Goethe’s contribution. Rather, I fo-
cus on a central aspect of Goethean phe-
nomenology: the notion of metamorphosis.
As expressed in the opening epigraph, Goe-
the saw all phenomena as transitory—mo-
mentary manifestations moving from a past
toward a future.
Be they clouds, rivers, plants, animals,
or the observer, all phenomena are embed-
ded in an ongoing process of metamorpho-
sis. Furthermore, by carefully attending to
the metamorphosis of the phenomenon at
hand, the observer can be led into a cogni-
tive experience of the wholeness of the phe-
nomenon.
In this essay, I attempt to lead the
reader toward this cognitive experience or,
at the very least, to offer an explanation of
what this experience may entail.
B efore we look at natural phenomena, it
may be instructive to begin with a geo-
metric example (fig. 1, below). As we
glance at the shapes from left to right (or
from right to left), note that shape and size
change in an orderly manner. Furthermore,
the shading changes in a stepwise fashion.
Several features appear to be correlated and
accordingly change in concert.
If the shapes were cut out and reor-
dered randomly, a student would have little
problem arranging them in the original or-
derly progression. One would also be able
easily to draw an intermediate oval shape
that could logically “fit” between any two
shapes in the series, say between d and e.
This is possible because we readily grasp
the context that gives meaning to the order
of the shapes—and is itself accessed
through the shapes. That context then in-
forms our ability to draw a “missing” shape.
Moreover, rather than seeing the shapes as
isolated phenomena juxtaposed in space, we
instinctively see them as steps in a develop-
mental process, frozen moments in a contin-
uum.
How many missing shapes are there?
Clearly, as a property of a continuum, there
exists an infinite number of missing or, bet-
ter, potential shapes in the sequence. In fact,
between any two shapes, there exists an in-
finite number of potential shapes. There are,
however, limits to the infinite number of po-
tential shapes because not any random shape
will do. Like hearing a wrong note played in
a melody, we would immediately notice an
incorrect shape misplaced in the sequence.
One final point regarding this pictorial
sequence: A distinguishing feature ex-
pressed through the relationship of the
shapes to each other is that they exhibit both
difference and sameness simultaneously. In
other words, each shape in the sequence can
be considered the same shape expressed in
various degrees of modification. I will re-
turn to this point later, but for now we can
ask: How does this example apply to the no-
tion of metamorphosis in nature?
I n The Metamorphosis of Plants, Goethe
(1790) took great pains to describe
clearly and objectively the various organs
of the plant, noting morphological details of
shape, size, juxtaposition, and so forth. One
of his many key insights was the observa-
tion that the plant is all “leaf,” meaning
there is one transformative movement, one
gesture (not an actual leaf) that comes to ex-
pression through the various spatially ar-
ranged organs, such as among the leaves up
the stem, in the calyx, corolla, and stamens:
The organ that expanded on the stem as leaf,
assuming a variety of forms, is the same or-
gan that now contracts in the calyx, expands
again in the petal, contracts in the repro-
ductive apparatus, only to expand finally as
fruit (ibid., p. 100).
In other words, there is one ideal organ
that comes to expression in modified form
19
along the length of the plant. This is the es-
sence of metamorphosis: Both unity and its
manifestation in diversity are entwined in
the phenomenon. Evidence of this notion in-
cludes plant structures that are morphologi-
cal combinations of two organs, as if the dif-
ferentiation process were unable to actualize
fully; or organs that appear in the “wrong”
place. This can occur as a “mistake” in de-
velopment, such as the proliferous rose that
caught Goethe’s attention in that it pos-
sessed a stem with leaves protruding from
the center of the flower; or the proliferous
carnation that exhibited multiple additional
stalked flowers growing out of the main co-
rolla (ibid., pp. 93–96).
Many plant species, however, demon-
strate configurations of incomplete differen-
tiation under normal circumstances, e.g., the
familiar poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima;
Euphorbiaceae), in which the pollinator-at-
traction role, usually characteristic of the
corolla, is shifted to the brilliant red upper
leaves; or the neotropical heliconias (Heli-
coniaceae) where intermediate forms be-
tween leaf and bract are typical (fig. 2, be-
low).
T o grasp fully the notion of metamorpho-
sis, one needs to hold difference and
sameness simultaneously in one’s con-
sciousness (as in the example of figure 1).
Bortoft (2012) described this cognitive ex-
perience as an act of distinguishing:
Distinguishing is a dual movement of think-
ing which goes in opposite directions at
once: in one direction it differences [read as
a verb], whereas in the other direction it re-
lates. So the act of distinction ‘differ-
ences/relates’—not differences and relates,
because this would be two movements,
whereas there is one movement which is
dual (ibid., p. 22).
 to this quality of betweenness as the
“context of movement,” which relates
and integrates all the spatially dispar-
ate parts into a unified whole.
Of course, nothing tangible is in
motion in figure 3; it’s only in the
mind’s eye that a movement or gesture
comes to expression. But once the at-
tentive observer grasps the context of
movement—the dynamic quality of
betweenness in the metamorphosis—it
becomes objectively evident what may
constitute the potential, as yet unman-
ifested, forms. Just as one can draw
We can practice this mode of cognition endless triangles or rectangles if one grasps
by studying the leaf metamorphosis of a the “rules” that inform them, so can one
given plant. As in many annual plants, the draw endless leaves that could conceivably
ragleaf bahia (Bahia dissecta; Asteraceae) fit into the sequence.
(fig. 3, above), a common plant of the cen- The next step is to regard how a partic-
tral Arizona highlands, exhibits a marked ular flower is associated with a given leaf
transformation of the leaf shape up the stem, metamorphosis. Compared to imagining a
technically known as heterophylly. In pre- potential leaf in the sequence, this effort is
paring this figure, I removed the leaves from much more challenging because it entails a
the stem and then dried, pressed, and ar- yet deeper cognitive experience of the plant,
ranged them in a spiral, the lowest stem an experience that approaches what Goethe
leaves at the bottom left; the uppermost described as the Urpflanze or “Archetypal
leaves and terminal flowers, near the center Plant.” Goethe pointed to this experience
of the arrangement. and its associated application:
One can readily see the progression of
one leaf shape to the next in the sequence. With this model and the key to it, it will be
Clearly, no two leaves are identical. Note possible to go on forever inventing plants
that it’s through their ordered differences and know that their existence is logical; that
that the movement or gesture becomes intel- is to say, if they do not actually exist, they
ligible. As in figure 1, there are several mor- could, for they are not the shadow phantoms
phological trajectories that intersect. For in- of vain imagination, but possess an inner
stance, note how leaf size expands then con- necessity and truth (from Goethe’s Italian
tracts, or how leaf shape becomes less dif- Journey, in Brady 1987, p. 268).
ferentiated and then more complex, or how
the relative length of the petiole (leaf stalk) If we direct our attention toward see-
at one point begins to shorten. Regarding the ing the botanical structures clearly in all
contraction of leaf size toward the apex of their detail, and seeing betweenness not as
the stem, one observes that the final leaves an intellectual abstraction or as an empty
seem to disappear from space; they become void but as a dynamic reality, then we ap-
insubstantial so that a new metamorphic im- proach what can be considered the organiz-
pulse can come into being, that of the ing principle and the dynamic wholeness of
flower. the plant. Bortoft (1996, pp. 240–241) de-
scribes this experience; note how the dis-
ased on the preceding, one needs to re- tinction between subject and object, ob-
B gard the space between the leaves— server and observed, simultaneously
what I will call “betweenness”—as a crucial unites/dissolves:
aspect of the wholeness of the phenomenon.
Just as in the structure of a musical melody The organizing principle of the phenomenon
the intervals are equally as important as the itself, which is its intrinsic necessity, comes
notes, experiencing betweenness among the into expression in the activity of thinking
parts of an organism—a plant, in this case— when this consists in trying to think the phe-
is the key to finding wholeness, or meaning, nomenon concretely. What is experienced is
in the phenomenon. Brady (1998) referred
20
not a representation of the organizing prin-
ciple, a copy of it ‘in the mind,’ but the or-
ganizing principle itself acting in thinking.
I n the last part of this essay, I outline some
possible examples of this phenomenolog-
ical approach through which we can attempt
to grasp betweenness as a dynamic reality
such that all parts become revelations of the
whole. Besides observing and comparing
the structures of a plant, one can apply the
same way of seeing to an animal. Holdrege
(1999), for example, examines the biologi-
cal details of the sloth, noting how all its
parts, including behavior, integrate into an
expressive whole. No part of the animal is
superfluous and each has significance in the
context of the living organism.
Another approach is to contrast two
seemingly very different organisms so that
each can be used to illuminate the other.
Here, too, Holdrege (1998) provides an ex-
ample in his comparison of the horse and the
lion; whereas the horse accentuates, for in-
stance, the skeletal system and hooves by
providing a rigid support structure (the
horse can sleep standing up), the lion is
dominated by the muscular system, which
exhibits remarkable suppleness and dra-
matic swings between tension and relaxa-
tion (when relaxed, the lion collapses to the
ground).
One can apply this comparative
method also on a landscape level. For exam-
ple, in the central Arizona highlands, the as-
pen (Populus tremuloides; Salicaceae) is a
familiar and striking tree. It has a thin, tall,
straight appearance, its branches extending
from the upper trunk (fig. 4a, next page). Its
bark is white and even rubs off like talcum
powder. The individual leaves flutter with
the slightest breeze (hence the Latin species
name) and, in the autumn, turn a stunning
gold before dropping. One can regard the as-
pen as having an open “sensitivity” to its
surroundings: the trembling leaves, the thin
bark, the dramatic seasonal change of ap-
pearance, and the delicate, fuzzy catkins.
More than many temperate tree species, the
architecture of the aspen resembles a neuron
complete with axon and dendrites (fig. 4b).
In striking contrast, the alligator juni-
per (Juniperus deppeana; Cupressaceae),
found mostly at lower elevations than the
aspen but overlapping in some areas, exhib-
its a rounded, enclosing crown, in which
dense clumps of needles sway together
 (or not necessarily related) organ-
isms. One ground-breaking work is
biologist Wolfgang Schad’s study of
the entire class of mammals (Schad
1977, 2012; Riegner 1998). Echoing
Goethe’s archetypal plant, Schad’s
exhaustive observations uncover the
interweaving of morphological tra-
jectories that reiterate in various con-
figurations in different species of
mammals. Inspired by Schad’s con-
tribution, researchers have used his
approach to investigate morphologi-
cal patterns in dinosaurs (Lockley
2008), birds (Riegner 2008), and gen-
eral patterns of evolution (Rosslen-
broich 2014).
These journeys into whole-or-
ganism biology are just a beginning.
In time, as more studies demonstrate
the value of a phenomenological ap-
proach, a metamorphosis of the sci-
when a strong breeze moves through the tree ences themselves may lead to new explora-
(fig. 4c). The bark, from which the tree gets tions of the dynamics of wholeness in na-
its common name, is remarkably thick and ture.
deeply furrowed (fig. 4d). As a conifer, the
juniper is evergreen and shows little change References
in appearance through the seasons, thus a Amrine, F., Zucker F., & Wheeler, H., eds.
relative lack of sensitivity to its surround- 1987. Goethe and the Sciences. Boston,
ings. Like the tree itself, its fruits are spher- MA: D. Reidel.
ical, fleshy berries relished by wildlife. Bortoft, H. 1996. The Wholeness of Nature.
In comparing the aspen and alligator Hudson, NY: Lindesfarne Press.
juniper, one notes that they are morphologi- Bortoft, H. 2012. Taking Appearance Seri-
cal polarities; once these endpoints are ously. Edinburgh, UK: Floris Books.
identified, a context is provided to examine Brady, R. H. 1987. Form and Cause in Goe-
other local trees with “intermediate” forms. the's Morphology. In F. Amrine, F.
For example, the ponderosa pine (Pinus Zucker, & H. Wheeler, eds., Goethe and
ponderosa; Pinaceae), another conifer, with the Sciences, pp. 257–300. Boston, MA:
its less dense, more airy structure and flaky, D. Reidel Publishing Co.
even sweet-smelling, bark, exhibits a more Brady, R. H. 1998. The Idea in Nature: Re-
open architecture than the “self-enclosed” reading Goethe’s Organics. In D. Seamon
alligator juniper, while the emory oak & A. Zajonc, eds., Goethe's Way of Sci-
(Quercus emoryi; Fagaceae), with its partly ence, pp. 83–111. Albany, New York:
stunted, twisted architecture, thick, grooved SUNY Press.
bark, and stiff, contracted leaves, also stands Goethe, J. W. von. 1790. The Metamorpho-
between the juniper and the aspen but leans sis of Plants [photographs by G. L. Mil-
somewhat closer to the former. Just as the ler]. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.
leaf sequence of an annual plant creates a Holdrege, C. 1998. Seeing the Animal
context for envisioning potential leaves, so Whole: The Example of the Horse and
a careful comparison of forest trees offers a Lion. In D. Seamon & A. Zajonc, eds.,
descriptive means to situate particular spe- Goethe's Way of Science, pp. 213–232.
cies in a web of morphological relationships Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
(Schad 1967). Holdrege, C. 1999. What Does it Mean to be
a Sloth? NetFuture [on-line journal], no.
T he search for betweenness via the Goe-
thean tradition can be extended further
to examine an entire group of closely related
97 (Nov. 3); article available at: www.na-
tureinstitute.org/nature/sloth.htm [last ac-
cessed July 2, 2014].
21
Holdrege, C. 2013. Thinking Like a Plant.
Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne
Books.
Lockley, M. G. 2008. The Morphodynamics
of Dinosaurs, Other Archosaurs, and
Their Trackways. In R. Bromley & R.
Melchor, eds., Ichnology at the Cross-
roads, pp. 27–51. Society of Economic
Paleontologists and Mineralogists Special
Publication 88.
Miller, D. E., ed. 1988. Goethe: Scientific
Studies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Riegner, M. F. 1998. Horns, Hooves, Spots,
and Stripes: Form and Pattern in Mam-
mals. In D. Seamon, & A. Zajonc, eds.,
Goethe's Way of Science, pp. 177–212.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Riegner, M. F. 2008. Parallel Evolution of
Plumage Pattern and Coloration in Birds:
Implications for Defining Avian Mor-
phospace. Condor 110: 599-614.
Riegner, M. F. 2013. Ancestor of the New
Archetypal Biology: Goethe’s Dynamic
Typology as a Model for Contemporary
Evolutionary Developmental Biology.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Bio-
logical and Biomedical Sciences 44: 735–
744.
Rosslenbroich, B. 2014. On the Origin of
Autonomy. NY: Springer.
Schad, W. 1967. Zur Biologie der Gestalt
der Mitteleuropäischen Buchen-
verwandten Bäume (Fagales). Elemente
der Naturwissenschaft 7: 11–24 [Toward
a Biology of Form: Central European
Trees of the Beech Order (Fagales)].
Schad, W. 1977. Man and Mammals: To-
ward a Biology of Form. Garden City,
NY: Waldorf Press.
Schad, W. 2012. Säugetiere und Mensch, 2
bӓnde. Stuttgart: Verlag Freies
Geistesleben, [English translation in
prep.].
Seamon, D., & Zajonc, A., eds. 1998. Goe-
the’s Way of Science. Albany, NY: SUNY
Press.
Figures: 1. Sequence of oval shapes; 2. Hel-
iconia plant showing transition (“metamor-
phosis”) between leaf and bract; 3. Leaves
and flowers of ragleaf bahia; note the met-
amorphosis; 4a. Aspen tree in autumn col-
ors; 4b. aspen architecture’s resemblance
to a neuron, with axon and dendrites; 4c. al-
ligator juniper; 4d. detail of alligator juni-
per bark.
A Phenomenology with the Natural World
Tim Ingold
Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. His books include The Life of Lines
(Routledge, forthcoming, 2015); Making: Anthropology, Archeology, Art and Architecture (Routledge, 2013); and Being Alive: Es-
says on Movement, Knowledge and Description (Routledge, 2011). tim.ingold@abdn.ac.uk. © 2014 Tim Ingold.
P henomenology has not, for me, been
a point of departure. I have never
thought of it as an approach, method,
or way of working that I might apply. Like
most things philosophical, it has grown on
me more or less serendipitously and has
wormed its way into my thinking without
my really noticing it.
No doubt, this home-grown phenome-
nology takes all kinds of liberties with the
canonical texts, many of which I am happy
to leave unread. Textual exegesis is a task
for trained philosophers and not for ama-
teurs like me. I have always been slightly
bemused by scholars who bury their heads
in the most arcane and impenetrable of texts
in the effort, they explain, to get to the bot-
tom of our experience as beings in a world.
You would think that the best way to fathom
the depths of human experience would be to
attend to the world itself and to learn di-
rectly from what it has to tell us.
This, of course, is what inhabitants do
all the time, in their daily lives, and they
have much to teach us. That’s why I remain,
both by training and at heart, an anthropolo-
gist and not a philosopher. If we are to begin
to resolve the crisis in our relations with
what we call the “natural world,” then we
should be listening to the wisdom of its in-
habitants, both human and non-human, ra-
ther than taking shelter in the closeted self-
referentiality of philosophical discourse.
N evertheless, in much the same way as
phenomenology, anthropology strug-
gles with what looks like a mismatch be-
tween ethical principle and scholarly prac-
tice. For while claiming to study with and to
learn from our interlocutors, we anthropolo-
gists have a nasty habit of turning lessons
learned into material for analysis. This is
what happens when we say that what we are
actually doing is ethnography. It is like turn-
ing the telescope to look through the wrong
end. Instead of calling on the experience we
have shared with those among whom we
have worked to enlarge our vision of the
world, we take our sights from the Olym-
pian heights of theory to scrutinize the
thinking of our erstwhile teachers.
The source of the problem, I believe,
lies with that little word of. I have long held
doubts about the fundamental postulate of
phenomenology, namely that consciousness
must always be consciousness of, precisely
because it puts the telescope the wrong way
round. Likewise, when we invoke the phe-
nomenology or the anthropology of this or
that, it seems that we run rings around the
thing in question, turning the places or the
paths from which we observe into circum-
scribed topics of inquiry.
The operative word, I think, should not
be of but with. I would start from the postu-
late, then, that consciousness is always con-
sciousness with, before it is ever conscious-
ness of. Whereas ‘of-ness’ is intentional,
‘with-ness’, I would argue, is attentional.
And what it sets up are relations not of in-
tersubjectivity but correspondence.
T he problem in our relations with the nat-
ural world, then, is that we have forgot-
ten how to correspond with the beings and
things of which it is comprised. We have
been so concerned with the interaction be-
tween ourselves and others that we have
22
failed to notice how both we and they go
along together in the current of time. This,
surely, is what sustainability means: not the
perpetuation of a completed form or stable
state but the capacity to keep going, to carry
on, or to perdure. If interaction is about oth-
ering, then correspondence is about togeth-
ering. It is about the ways along which lives,
in their perpetual unfolding or becoming,
answer to one another.
This shift from interaction to corre-
spondence entails a fundamental reorienta-
tion, from the between-ness of beings and
things to their in-between-ness. Think of a
river and its banks. We might speak of the
relation of one bank to the other, and cross-
ing a bridge, we might find ourselves half-
way between the two. But the banks are con-
tinually being formed and reformed by the
waters of the river as they sweep by. These
waters flow in between the banks, along a
line orthogonal to the span of the bridge.
To say of beings and things that they
are in-between is to align our awareness
with the waters; to correspond with them is
to join this awareness with the flow. Just
such a shift of orientation is needed, I be-
lieve, if we are to understand the world of
nature as one that we do not only experience
but can also live with or inhabit both now
and for the foreseeable future.
Evolving Conceptions of
Environmental Phenomenology
Bryan E. Bannon
Bannon is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Environmental Studies at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mas-
sachusetts. He is the author of From Mastery to Mystery: a Phenomenological Foundation for an Environmental Ethic (Ohio Univ.
Press, 2014). bannonb@merrimack.edu. © 2014 Bryan E. Bannon.
G
iven the centrality of the concept of
nature within phenomenological in-
quiry, it should be no surprise that
many philosophers have turned to that phil-
osophical tradition to address environmen-
tal issues. In addition to the conceptual in-
sights phenomenology has offered, the
method’s emphasis on experience has con-
tributed to creating space for a diversity of
voices that might not otherwise be heard
within the philosophical community.
To my mind, however, the most im-
portant contribution phenomenology has
made to environmentalism is the reminder
that the philosophical questions relating to
nature are not merely conceptual puzzles but
emerge from both our personal and collec-
tive connection to and affection for the
world in which we live.
Even as phenomenologists have writ-
ten about, among other themes, the human
relationship to the environment and animal
life, the narratives that shape that relation-
ship, and the constitution and value of
places, valid and important criticisms have
emerged regarding various elements of phe-
nomenological method. These have in-
cluded a perceived anthropocentrism, a less
than adequate conception of materiality, and
a persistent, unacknowledged subjectivism.
While in some cases the charges are
somewhat overblown, what these criticisms
reveal is the need for phenomenology to
evolve and adapt as a method so as to meet
current challenges, particularly those posed
by the environment. Specifically, chal-
lenges deriving from new materialisms
(e.g., Karen Barad, Isabelle Stengers, and
Bruno Latour) need to be addressed for phe-
nomenology to retain its relevance.
The particular force behind these
views stems from the conception of the
world they advocate and how that concep-
tion both jibes with phenomenological goals
and requires the reformation of certain phe-
nomenological principles. Take, for exam-
ple, the case of Latour. While he explicitly
rejects the category of nature, distancing
himself from the traditional phenomenolo-
gists such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty,
throughout his work one finds the same mo-
tivation that inspires all phenomenologists:
a return to experience as the foundation of
philosophical inquiry.
What is interesting is how the two ap-
proaches diverge depending on whether one
begins, as in most varieties of phenomenol-
ogy, with lived experience or, as with Latour
and many of the new materialisms, with an
asubjective conception of experience. The
former, as Heidegger had already noted
nearly a century ago, is yet another manifes-
tation of modernity’s dualistic subject-ob-
ject metaphysics. If the Heideggerian and
Latourian rejection of lived experience is an
apt one, phenomenologists might learn from
these new materialisms a new starting point
that complicates our inquiries and enriches
our findings.
I n terms of these complications, there are
several methodological issues with which
phenomenologically-minded environmental
philosophers must reckon:
 Acknowledging that human experience
is one kind of experience among many
and thereby recognizing that human ex-
perience cannot be a foundation for
generalizable claims about the environ-
ment;
 Understanding subjectivity as a com-
plex network of relations formed both
through complex biological networks
23
as well as through complex interper-
sonal and institutional networks;
 Coming to terms with the less adversar-
ial understanding of technology and the
sciences that accompanies the attribu-
tion of agency and experience to things
in the world.
This list is intended neither to be ex-
haustive nor to imply that there are not con-
temporary phenomenologists already atten-
tive to these issues. Rather, it is meant to
give a sense of how phenomenology might
adapt and expand to include insights not
only from contemporary philosophers but
now more established lines of critique as
found in the work of, for example, Foucault
and Deleuze.
The ways in which these adaptations
might enrich the phenomenological project
are also myriad. For one, consider the vari-
ous phenomenologies possible once nonhu-
mans are acknowledged to have a form of
subjectivity proper to them! Rather than
endless debates about whether animals
“have” consciousness or reason, the discus-
sion shifts to how diverse forms of life dis-
play a rationality proper to them by con-
structing a world of relations for themselves
through whatever means are available to
them cognitively and environmentally.
Though the potential for making phenome-
nological errors increases, by engaging with
other forms of animal life in this way we
may be able to envision better ways to con-
struct a human world more inclusive of our
fellow non-human beings.
Including specific technological and
institutional analyses as a part of our think-
ing about the human relationship to nature
can shed light on the psychological and so-  On one hand, a perspective associated about embodiment and the question of novel
cial obstacles to adopting a more environ- with the organismic conception of na- ecosystems. While there may contemporar-
mentally friendly lifestyle: ture in which there is an inherent order ily be good prudential and political reasons
 How does a certain technique affect our to an ecological system that must be to maintain reservations about the creation
view of other beings? maintained; of such systems, on a relational conception
 How could reorganizing a specific so-  On the other hand, a perspective asso- of nature there is no way to reject their es-
cial arrangement lead to a more sustain- ciated with the relational conception in tablishment out-of-hand and without discus-
able way of interacting with each other which the order present in ecological sion. If there is no one way that nature is
and with the earth? systems is largely contingent. In this meant to be, no one order that must be pre-
 How might we reconsider the notion of latter view, organisms do not possess served, what obstacles are there to establish-
community to include both animate and ecological niches but they create them, ing new biotic communities? In this way,
inanimate aspects of the environment? and environments are largely a result of humans may take a more active hand in
the creative activity of organisms and shaping ecological communities in a man-
Again, these questions have not neces- the geological forces of the earth. ner similar to what Steven Vogel called the
sarily been ignored, but the decentering of “social construction of the environment.”
the human in phenomenological research While I have been emphasizing the need for We do not, however, need to restrict
may yield new findings. phenomenology to change, there are also ourselves to what is best for human beings
myriad ways in which the insights of the in making these choices. Rather, we might
aim for, as Karen Barad puts it, “making a
A s one example, consider some of the phenomenological tradition can be helpful
ways in which many phenomenolo- to philosophers endorsing new material-
gists consider the concept of nature: follow- isms. For example, Martin Drenthen and
better world, a livable world, a world based
on values of co-flourishing and mutuality,
ing Husserl, as an idealized and mathema- John van Buren have both pointed out ways not fighting and diminishing one another,
tized object, derived from the personalistic in which hermeneutic methods might be em- not closing one another down, but helping to
attitude, correlative to an intentional con- ployed to address environmental problem- open up our ideas and ourselves to each
sciousness or, following philosophers like solving, both in terms of eliminating disa- other and to new possibilities, which with
Hans Jonas and David Abram, as itself an greement and opening up possibilities for any luck will have the potential to help us
organism and a subject. interpreting exactly what the problems are see our way through to a world that is more
While the latter serves to counteract that we face. livable, not for some, but for the entangled
the kinds of excesses environmentalists Another possible contribution derives wellbeing of all” [1].
have identified with the modernistic con- from the history of phenomenological en- Setting some of these ideals as our
ception of nature (and Husserl himself was gagement with science and technology. goals, it is necessary to think through the ef-
critical of those tendencies as well in The Given the similarities between phenomenol- fects on others’ embodiment, including the
Crisis of the European Sciences and Tran- ogists’ and new materialists’ criticisms of nonhuman and perhaps even the nonliving,
scendental Phenomenology), the under- the modern scientific worldview, new mate- in order to realize them. In this way, our en-
standing of nature as a subject or an organ- rialisms would be remiss to dismiss phe- riched phenomenological insights might
ism still utilizes the same fundamental met- nomenological critique as mere doom and give new meaning to Aldo Leopold’s in-
aphysical categories to understand the world gloom or overly romantic and pessimistic. junction to “think like a mountain.”
as the modernistic conception of nature, that In many cases, phenomenological concerns Theoretical constructs, like species,
of subjects and objects. can serve as a useful guardrail against slip- need to evolve to survive. At this point in
If the new materialisms mentioned ping back into the technological excesses of history, phenomenology faces both philo-
above have any consistent view between modernity. sophical and institutional pressures to do so.
them shared with phenomenologists, it is Last, phenomenologists’ emphasis on To meet these pressures, I will humbly make
that the subject-object metaphysics must be the ineliminable affective dimension to ex- one final recommendation pertaining to our
abandoned. Perhaps what we learn from perience can continue to have an important style of writing. Currently, so-called “conti-
their criticisms is that phenomenology has role in decision-making regarding the de- nental” approaches to the environment tend
not been as thorough as it could be in ex- sign of places, especially if the material to base themselves in dense exposition of
punging these ghosts of modernity. Rather world is more affectively sensitive than pre- texts. While these can be useful to fellow
than considering nature as a being that pos- viously given credit for. scholars and have value in terms of clarify-
sesses inherent properties in need of preser- ing the views of historical philosophers, the
vation, we might move toward a more rela- approach allows others who are unfamiliar
tional conception of nature. Essentially, this S o, if this alliance of phenomenology and
new forms of materialism is possible,
shift amounts to a choice between two con- the question remains of what kinds of
with (or perhaps averse to) the ideas of the
philosophers under consideration to ignore
trasting conceptions of networks: changes in practice and inquiry become pos- our work. If we were more open to address-
sible on that basis. To explore this question, ing the currently prevalent ideas in environ-
consider the interplay between concerns mental philosophy more generally in lan-

24
guage that is not specific to particular phi- hope we rise to these challenges. What the us from some of the major theoretical im-
losophers, this would make our work more phenomenological philosophy that emerges passes of the twentieth century.
difficult to ghettoize and to ignore. Philoso-from these trials has in common with a phi-
phers like Ingrid Stefanovic and Irene losophy like Stengers’ “ecology of prac- Note
Klaver might serve as models in this regard. tices” remains to be determined. But we 1. Karen Barad, “Erasers and Erasures:
should be encouraged both by the continuity Pinch’s Unfortunate ‘Uncertainty Princi-
G iven the positive contributions the phe- of concerns between them as well as the po-
nomenological method has made and tential such affiliations have for removing
could make to environmental philosophy, I
ple’,” Social Studies of Science 41: 450.

Place Making, Phenomenology, and

Lived Sustainability
John Cameron
Retired environmental educator John Cameron lives on Bruny Island, just off the southeastern coast of Tasmania, the island state
south of mainland Australia. His nine “Letters from Far South” have appeared in EAP, winter and fall 2008; spring 2009; winter
and fall 2010; spring 2011; winter and fall 2012; and spring 2014. jcameronblackstone@gmail.com. © 2014 John Cameron.

A
fter years of full-time environmen-
tal advocacy followed by an aca-
demic career teaching place phe-
nomenology and supervising students in
phenomenological and other qualitative re-
search methods, I immersed myself in re-
tirement in place making on Bruny Island,
Tasmania.
Through publishing nine of my essays
in EAP, David Seamon has generously pro-
vided me with the opportunity to explore
questions relating to place, phenomenology,
and environmental concerns. In the spirit of
giving voice to place that has infused my
‘Letters from Far South,” I leaven my com-
mentary with brief accounts of some of the
encounters my partner Vicki and I have had
with the more-than-human world of “Black-
stone,” our 55 acres of land on the island.
T he experience of place making became
more intertwined with phenomenologi-
cal perspectives and practices as our time on
Bruny progressed. As various phenomena—
for example, the form of a sandstone rock
shelf or the charred trunk of a grasstree—
seized my attention, I drew on Goethean sci-
ence, a proto-phenomenological practice, to
explore them more deeply:
I was drawn to sit much closer, into the en-
closure of the fallen leaves, and the universe
did indeed become suddenly compact. There
was an odd juxtaposition between the inti- me to a depth of communication and com-
macy of the space created by the “hair” munion with elements of the natural world
hanging down to the ground, the breath of that I had previously not experienced.
the breeze, and the harshness of the snake-
like “skin” seared black. From within the fi-
brous cave beneath the grasstree, I could
imagine the movement of the plant drawing
B y virtue of our choice to produce our
own electricity, rely on rainwater, have
composting toilets, and grow some of our
nutrients from the earth upward, meeting own produce, I could write more directly
fire and producing such delicate elongated about what it was like to live more sustaina-
leaves that they seemed to be merging into bly. Here the power of phenomenology in
the air. This motion brought me closer to a constantly focusing on the experience itself,
sense of what the gesture of the grasstree rather than theories or ideas about sustaina-
might be [1]. bility, showed itself. On some occasions,
producing our own power was energizing
Undertaking Goethean science offered and affirming:
a stance of openness toward the natural
world, an attitude of receptivity through in- One spring afternoon I was striding down
tuitive sensing. It also raised many ques- toward the house with a bracing wind blow-
tions of practice. It took many hours over a ing straight off the Channel into my face and
long period of sitting, drawing, intuiting, the sun glinting off the water into my eyes. I
and writing to gain even a simplified under- exulted in the strength of the elements and
standing of particular plants and rocks from lengthened my stride. “It’s a high energy
a Goethean perspective. In addition, there day today,” I declared to Vicki, and we en-
are limitations to the broader applicability of joyed the new layer of meaning that term
this approach. It requires a commitment that now had for us [2].
many people, even sympathetic observers,
would lack the time and inclination to make. On other occasions, it proved to be
In the latter stages of the process I used, the more psychologically challenging than I had
understandings were fleeting and numi- imagined:
nous—not easily transferable to everyday Behind my wry self-description of being
perception despite their emotional power at “technically challenged” lay a psychologi-
the time. Their main effect has been to open cally slippery slope. I quickly had to over-

25
come my fear of approaching any unfamil-
iar machine without an expert by my side, as
all the “experts” were in Hobart and reluc-
tant to make the ferry journey to Bruny.
Technical instructions from Simply Solar by
phone about our declining batteries often
left me puzzled and, at worst, in confused
desperation. I re-experienced boyhood anx-
ieties about my lack of practical aptitude
and common sense [3].
Another aspect of our environmental
ethos was our desire to re-vegetate our de-
graded sheep paddocks and provide sanctu-
ary for endangered and other wildlife. Our
experience was a far cry from the gradual
deepening of relationship implied by advo-
cates of ecological restoration with phrases
such as “restoring the land, healing the
mind” [4]. The neighboring grazier pre-
dicted angrily that our land would be a
bloody mess if we removed his sheep.
We planted 4,000 native trees, shrubs,
and plugs of native grasses. We sprayed
thistles. In some seasons, the place did look
a “bloody mess,” and I felt like one, too,
veering erratically between despondency
and elation as the trees grew, but weeds and
pests proliferated.
There is value in a phenomenological
account of such processes, if only to provide
a salutary tale for those who undertake land
regeneration, as we did, with more idealism
than expertise, and to those who glibly ad-
vocate tree planting as a panacea. In the end,
though, I was able to write:
I do have the strong sense that as the birds
in the fields check out our planted trees, the
ladybirds and skinks take refuge in the tree
guards, and some self-sown eucalypts begin
to appear now the sheep have left, we are
working in partnership with the regenera-
tive forces of the land [5].
Spending each morning up in the pad-
docks gave me the opportunity for encoun-
tering more of the wildlife. Our lived envi-
ronmental ethic has evolved during our time
on Bruny. An attitude of care and respect for
wildlife grew into recognition of the agency
and creative presence of other species. At
university, I had taught students about moral
considerability and the rights of other spe-
cies, but confronting the power and fierce
gaze of a flesh-and-blood-and-feathers
equal was a different matter altogether. One became important while spraying, for exam-
of the turning points was direct engagement ple.
with the eagles: In what is almost a paradox, I’ve be-
come more actively receptive and recep-
The eagle has hovered above my head on tively active in my approach. Susan Mur-
several occasions since, and each time I phy’s dictum “accept all offers” as applied
have met her fierce gaze as directly as I can. to invitations to pay attention by the more-
My pulse still races and the skin on the back than-human-world has become a guiding
of my neck still tingles as I hold all possibil- principle: “What deeper experience am I be-
ities for the encounter open. It’s another ing offered by the natural world in this mo-
shift in attention, I realize. I’m so accus- ment? How do I respond?” [9]. Perhaps this
tomed to being the one who is checking is an inevitable aspect of the phenomenolog-
things out that it’s odd to let myself be the ical endeavor—a prolonged inquiry into any
object of a large wild creature’s curiosity phenomenon changes both the experience
when she is clearly unafraid of me. The ea- and one’s capacity to experience.
gle is calling the shots, not me; she decides The process of chronicling what has
how long she will remain poised over my occurred at Blackstone became an integral
head [6]. part of life, but it quickly became insuffi-
cient simply to narrate events. As research-
I t was a similar story with an embodied ers such as van Manen have emphasized, an
sense of place. One of my favored topics essential part of producing a phenomeno-
when teaching place phenomenology was logical account is rewriting, seeking always
Merleau-Ponty’s notion of body-subject [7]. to cleave to the experience itself [10]. “Is
It predisposed me toward explorations in that actually what happened?” and “What
body sensing through Goethean science and was it really like, as opposed to what I think
more generally in everyday life. it should be like” became constant questions
The notion of the inseparability of per- and frequently exposed how I embellished
son and world rolls easily off the tongue and my accounts. I’d argue that my best writing
pen, but when I felt it physically, I was dis- involved a lived reciprocity between experi-
concerted. For example, one day while encing and describing: the more I honed my
floating on my back in Blackstone Bay, I writing, the closer attention I paid to my ex-
distinctly sensed an unspoken “conversa- perience, the richer my life became, thus
tion” between my body and the enclosing providing more useful material for reflec-
water [8]. In retrospect, I realize I was un- tion and further writing.
settled because I felt that the water was not
only alive but was in some sort of mysteri-
ous communication directly through my I have often struggled to communicate
what I have learned on Blackstone in a
skin beyond my conscious understanding or way that is helpful for environmental action,
control. Body and brine were somehow in- even when there was a shared ethos:
terpenetrating, so that one of the primary
boundaries of what I consider myself to be I drove away from the meeting on local cli-
was dissolving. In less dramatic ways, I’ve mate change with mixed feelings. It had
often felt discomfited on Blackstone when been a stimulating event, but I was troubled
the very experience of deeper connection by absence of any mention of non-human
with other species or elements of place that life. It was of course implicit in the motiva-
I’ve been reading about and wanting to hap- tion for action on climate change. I knew
pen actually occurs. that many of our colleagues shared our con-
I came to realize that lived experience cern over the already visible effect of warm-
isn’t just the sum of what happens to a per- ing on the Bruny environments and its non-
son. Under the influence of the phenomeno- human inhabitants. Part of what I had been
logical gaze, as it were, human experiencing learning on Blackstone, though, was that
itself becomes a more active process. The human actions are best undertaken in part-
question of attention engaged my mind. The nership with natural forces, and a place will
quality of attention as well as the objects of make it clear what needs to be done if one is
attention—thistles, marker points, back and quietly attentive to it. It is inextricably part
shoulder muscles, and thought processes—
26
of daily life, extending well beyond ques- place relationships reinvigorates local com- 5. Letter from Far South 6. Environmental
tions of general motivation. “It’s not just all munities and leads to a wide range of social, and Architectural Phenomenology, 22, 2
about people,” I muttered to myself [11]. political, and environmental actions in de- (2011): 17.
fense of place. Place-based education coun- 6. Ibid., p. 16.
There is no shortage of advocates for teracts alienation and disconnection from 7. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of
bringing a place-oriented perspective to the rest of life with which humans share the Perception (London: Routledge, 1962).
bear on local responses to environmental planet. It provides the basis for a more 8. Letter from Far South 9. Environmental
challenges such as climate change. Geogra- meaningful, productive, expressive, and and Architectural Phenomenology, 25, 2
pher Edward Relph calls for a “pragmatic grounded life. (2014): 22–23.
sense of place,” bringing the voices of local Do the “sacred” and the “holy” have a 9. S. Murphy, Upside-Down Zen (Mel-
knowledge and experience into dialogue role in caring for the natural world? My bourne: Lothian Books, 2004).
while avoiding the pathologies of place, ideas about spirituality, place, and the sa- 10. M. van Manen, Researching Lived Ex-
considering alternatives and consequences, cred are changing as a result of our time on perience (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
and reaching “imperfect but workable Blackstone. Our attempt to provide sanctu- 1990); M. van Manen, Phenomenology
agreements” for courses of action [12]. ary for wildlife means more than providing of Practice (Walnut Creek, CA: Left
The difficulty is partly one of lan- physical refuge as the original meaning of Coast Press, 2014).
guage. For example, discussions about cli- the word as a holy place infers [15]. All be- 11. Excerpted from Letter from Far South
mate change, energy, and land use are usu- ings, animate and inanimate, are worthy of 11, Environmental and Architectural
ally couched in terms of political feasibility reverence. Simone Weil’s contention that Phenomenology, forthcoming, 2015.
and economic costs and benefits. In con- heartfelt attention is a form of prayer reso- 12. E. Relph, T., 2008, A Pragmatic Sense
trast, the language of place affiliation is po- nates strongly with me [16]. The choice to of Place, in Making Sense of Place, F.
etic and evocative, more rooted in the adopt an attentive attitude toward all forms Vanclay, M. Higgins, & A. Blackshaw,
soundscape of the place itself. When I’ve at- of the sentient world in which we are im- eds. (Canberra: National Museum of
tempted to bring in the perspectives and mersed is ultimately a spiritual one: Australia Press, 2008); reprinted in En-
value of other species, I’ve failed to stimu- vironmental and Architectural Phenom-
late anything approaching dialogue. One evening last month, as the setting sun enology, 20, 3 (2009): 24–31.
More fundamentally, environmental turned the rock pools into burnished mirrors 13. V. Plumwood, Environmental Culture
philosopher Val Plumwood contends that and filled the sandstone caves with honeyed (Lndon: Routledge, 2012). Far from any
we won’t deal effectively with environmen- light, I was stopped in my tracks by the still- naïve “talk with the animals” suggestion,
tal crises until we have a place-sensitive so- ness. Feeling weak-kneed, I put down the Plumwood’s notion of interspecies dia-
ciety in which the dominant institutions of oysters I had collected and sank onto a logue is highly sophisticated, based in
labor and property take place relations seri- nearby mushroom-shaped rock. Spontane- the combination of decades of ecophilo-
ously rather than reducing land to a real es- ously, I broke into a Buddhist chant. As my sophical inquiry and a lifetime’s experi-
tate commodity. Further, she argues that we voice reverberated in the sandstone hollows ence of living on her own in a biodiverse
must develop the capacity to enter into dia- and traversed the still waters, I felt I was environment.
logical relationships with “earth others” singing out a heartfelt thank you to the 14. In addition to the phased process of Goe-
[13]. rocks, waters, and mountains of the Chan- thean science I have employed, there are
I am sympathetic to this view and offer nel, in gratitude for their simply being there possibilities such as Shotter’s suggestion
tools for such an undertaking provided by [17]. of “withness action” (J. Shotter, Goethe
phenomenology and Goethean science [14]. and the Refiguring of Intellectual In-
If, however, human-human communication Notes quiry, Janus Head 8, 1 [2005]: 132–58).
over climate change is so difficult, the pro- 1. J. Cameron, Letter from Far South 5, En- 15. According to the Oxford English Dic-
spect of including other species in dialogue, vironmental and Architectural Phenom- tionary, the root word is the Latin “sanc-
however that is conceived, seems remote in- enology, 21, 3 (2010): 17. tus,” meaning holy.
deed. 2.J. Cameron, Letter from Far South 4. En- 16. S. Weil, Attention and Will, in Gravity
vironmental and Architectural Phenom- and Grace (London: Routledge and
enology, 21, 1 (2010): 16. Kegan Paul, 1952).

N otwithstanding these many difficulties, 3. Ibid.

I believe that movement toward a more 4. This phrase is the subtitle of T. Roszak,
place-responsive culture is a worthy under- M. Gomes, & A. Kanner, eds., Ecopsy-
17. Letter from Far South 8, Environmental
and Architectural Phenomenology, 23, 2
(2012): 21.
taking for a variety of reasons. Place-based chology: Restoring the Earth, Healing
education is richer and more locally relevant the Mind (San Francisco: Sierra Club
for students. A greater emphasis on local Books, 1995).

27
Social Space and Daily Commuting
Phenomenological Implications
Lena Hopsch
Hopsch, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.
hopsch@chalmers.se. Text and photographs © 2014 Lena Hopsch.

E ncouraging use of public transit is

one important way to reduce energy
consumption and counter climate
change. In my research on the design of
Swedish travel centers, I have studied the
transit stations for the planned “West Link,”
an underground railway tunnel through
Gothenburg that will increase the capacity
for commuter traffic.
My method is phenomenological; one
result is an interactive questionnaire that
works as a dialog tool for identifying “soft”
spatial qualities that might have value for
collaborative planning processes. I ask how
one might design public-transport spaces
that incorporate safety, comfort, unambigu-
ous orientation, and aesthetic values. A thor-
ough answer to this question might help de-
signers and planners to create more sustain-
able, user-friendly urban spaces.
(Hopsch et al. 2014). Phenomenology of-
fers an innovative way to address issues of
security, orientation, climate, and beauty,
especially in relation to contemporary
“placeless” environments with considerable
potential for alienation.
A phenomenological approach is also
valuable because spatial planning today in-
volves large-scale digital representation. To a starting point for working with new as-
understand lived space, however, human be-
ings must encounter it via bodily presence.
To gain a more thorough knowledge of this
lived attunement to space, our research
group used group discussion and explora-
tive workshops to investigate specific as-
pects of spatiality and movement in urban
traffic space. Participants in these work-
shops included researchers, practitioners,
and potential users.
In the first stage of our research, we
developed tools to identify and describe
“hermeneutical spiral” of progressive inter-
pretive discovery whereby perspectives are
widened and knowledge is deepened [2].
One result was new design methods and
tools that can be used to identify innovative
spatial qualities to strengthen environmental
encounter. A deeper knowledge of urban
spatial form in an embodied context created
pects in the design of space for public trans-
portation.
This focus on sensory dimensions of
the urban-transit experience provided a
point of common reference that allowed par-
ticipants to consider the experiential nature
of transit design. Participants came to rec-
ognize the importance of a multisensory fo-
cus, including the significance of haptic ex-
perience. Participants gained a deeper sense
of empathy—in other words, how to “feel
into things” and thereby incorporate affec-

T he French philosopher Merleau-Ponty

(2002) argued that human beings did
not receive sensory impressions passively.
Perception, he claimed, is active. Via a di-
rect, pre-reflective awareness, we stretch
ourselves into the world. Drawing on his
work, I have developed a research method
that I call “spatial-sensory analysis” [1].
The human sensory-motor system
plays a decisive role in perceiving and un-
derstanding space (Hopsch 2008; Johnson
2007; Merleau-Ponty 2002). One can speak
of spatial affordances or a spatiality of situ-
ation—i.e., the ways a certain space gives
possibilities for human action and interac-
tion.
How we perceive is a theme for psy-
chology and cognitive science. Phenome-
nology offers a theoretical base for generat-
ing architectural design that adequately ac-
counts for human movement and sensory
experiences as well as ethical concerns
environmental qualities that might inte-
grate urban public transit with urban
space. These tools were used in the early
tive dimensions of transit experience.
Considering peoples’ bodily and
sensory experiences of urban space con-
planning process. Researchers and practi- tributes to designing public transport in a
tioners were involved in a series of dialog more user-friendly way. One central goal
seminars to understand how to identify is contributing ideas for designing public
and notate taken-for-granted lived quali- places with a multivalent sense of mean-
ties and actions often regarded as “tacit ing. A phenomenological approach is a
knowledge” (Hartelo & Mochizuki 2009; useful tool because it offers new ways to
Hopsch et al. 2013). map out questions and to think in new
ways. This knowledge might contribute to
T he West Link Project is an eight-kilo- urban design and planning that support ur-
meter, double-track rail system under banites’ choice of mass transit as a con-
the center of Gothenburg. This network will venient, pleasurable mode of travel.
connect commuter rail services to city mass-
transit routes. In spring, 2012, a collabora-
tion between The Swedish Transport Ad- M ore broadly, this collaborative study
indicated that the way human beings
ministration and Chalmers University pre- sensuously experience place and space can
pared a pilot study of the designs for several become the nucleus for interdisciplinary
new West Link stations to be built as part of studies (Diaconu et al. 2011). Contemporary
the larger project. urban planning is a field of interconnected-
This collaboration drew on the model ness and relations; there is necessary a trans-
of a design research studio. The aim was a

28
disciplinary approach that bridges gaps be- 2. Other programs involved were Istanbul
tween architecture, urban planning land-
scape architecture, and traffic planning.
Questions developed within a complex
context require cooperation and mutual un-
derstanding to achieve resilient results. This
process can contribute to innovative struc-
tures that facilitate people’s choices in
transit situations and so contribute to more
sustainable urban development.
Notes
1. The present study is supported by the Hartelo, P. & Mochizuki, T., 2009. Think-
Swedish Research Council FORMAS, in
collaboration with the Swedish Transport
Administration. The broader focus of Hopsch, L., 2008. Rytmens estetik, formens
which the current work is part is “Archi-
tecture in Effect: Re-Thinking the Social
in Architecture.”
Topologies of Illumination
Matthew S. Bower
Bower is a doctoral student in the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Texas. His research examines the themes of
nature and commodity in the writings of Walter Benjamin. matthew.s.bower@gmail.com. © 2014 Matthew S. Bower.
G
oogle recently offered early
adopters of its Glass device a primer
on how not to seem “creepy or
rude” while using the new technology in
public. Sourced from firsthand experiences
of the company’s “Glass Explorer” mem-
bers, the guide issues a warning against
awkward social lapses caused by staring
into the device’s prism for extended periods.
Digital interfaces often induce such imper-
turbable trances as those in which
smartphone users already find themselves.
The shopper, artist, and business executive
now wear the distrait stare of a lone video
gamer, each navigating this unsteady mer-
ger of apparatus and environment.
There is a vanishing separation of
these “augmented” spaces—enhanced by
applications, high-resolution mobile pho-
tography, social networking, and the instan-
taneity of information—from the built and
designable forms through which everyday
life has been traditionally lived. As Google
acknowledges, however, it is still an un-
canny separation, continually reasserted
upon exploring and feeling out its limits,
Technical University’s Department of Ar-
chitecture; Mississippi State University’s
School of Art and Design; and the Ecole
Nationale d'Architecture de Paris’s
GERPHAU (Groupe d’études et de re-
cherche philosophie, architecture et ur-
bain).
References
Diaconu, M., Heuberger, E., & Berr, M.,
eds., 2011. Senses and the City (Berlin:
Lit Verlag).
ing the City, in Architecture and Phe-
nomenology (Kyoto: Seika University).
kraft [The Aesthetics of Rhythm, the
Power of Form]. Diss. (Göteborg:
Chalmers tekniska högskola).
finding us all the more prone to sudden jolts
and spells of disorientation. But the rude af-
fectations of the smartphone user (which
may only worsen as “wearables” and de-
vices tailored to gestural response gain cur-
rency) are more telling of discrepancies be-
tween the habits and norms of a changing
technological culture than of any failed ar-
chitectonic integration of the virtual.
That one could now feasibly organize
her life as though the world were nothing
more than a vast internet of data is a fact far gests, when things break down. With a sud-
from contingent upon any specific advance
in visual imaging. It speaks to our imagina-
tive submission to the virtual, even where
computer graphics fall short. The dream of
a “Second Life” is after all one of escapism.
There have always been sufficient, if ane-
mic, surrogates for the real, and the vam-
piric body of the gamer, nourished in dark-
ness on the glimmer of televisual feeds,
hardly needs convincing.
W e are inclined to imagine virtual real- ratus that filters the world through a search-
ity as a particular kind of interface. In able function therefore less “real” than the
the most common occurrences, however, we focusing effect of corrective eyewear?
can find a virtuality not set over and against
29
Hopsch, L., McCann, R., & Cesario, M.,
2013. The Body in Space: Promoting
Sustainable Urban Transport, a paper
presented at Crafting the Future, 10th Eu-
ropean Academy of Design Conference,
Gothenburg University.
Hopsch , L., McCann, R., & Cesario, M.,
2014. Traveling, Inhabiting, and Experi-
encing: A Phenomenology for Public
Transit, Environmental and Architec-
tural Phenomenology, 25, 1 (winter): 9–
14.
Johnson, M., 2007. The Meaning of the
Body (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press).
Merleau-Ponty, M., 2002. Phenomenology
of Perception (London: Routledge)
[originally 1945].
the real. Wearing eyeglasses, for instance,
suggests technical mediation of perception
resulting in a refocused real that becomes
more real to us than our unadorned vision.
The glasses become in their virtuality sec-
ond nature, once the weight is no longer felt
on the bridge of our nose and the frame’s
blur eventually lost, transfigured into an ex-
tension of our face (so much so that we feel
naked without them). Limits to the appa-
ratus nonetheless appear, as Heidegger sug-
den jerking of the head or in the midst of an
intimate embrace, the awkward presence of
our eyewear is reasserted.
But this does not prevent us from ex-
periencing visual clarity as a property be-
longing to the real. We imagine such lenses
as “corrective” of our own natural flaws in
relation to a measurable standard of human
physiology. In relation to other organisms,
other spectrums of light, there is no singular,
correct way of seeing the real. Is an appa-
 Technology enjoins with our percep-
tual field in the gestural articulation of see-
ing. Whether or not 3D movies or simula-
tion technologies such as Oculus Rift—and
whatever subsequent developments may
follow—offer compelling simulacra seems
beside the point. A low-resolution illusion is
not necessarily less illusory than a high-res-
olution one. Since its inception, video gam-
ing has offered an engrossing experience
that only grows in its scale of filmic excita-
tion. But, as in most Hollywood produc-
tions, the simulacrum is less than transform-
ative; it is manipulative. Such feats of illu-
sion do not set out to sway us of their every-
day factual existence. We already know
there is something uncanny about Google
Glass. Such augmentation and illusion only
exploit what we are willing to grant them.
However immersive the means of vir-
tual reality, a horizon of embodied aware-
ness endures. As with the sleight-of-hand
magician, whose illusions are most effica-
cious when we are complicit in their unveil-
ing, reality vanishes only in designated
blind spots. Cinematic magic also depends
on a suspension of disbelief, a willingness to
accept the possibilities within frame. We
can ask what it would mean then to feel at
home in technological virtuality. But such a
feeling would not correspond to those mo-
ments in which we want to be duped into be-
lieving something that we have already dif-
ferentiated from our everyday lives.
A more apposite answer to the ques-
tion of whether a virtual world could be-
come so “real” as to be lived as though it
were a “real” world should perhaps instead
be sought in the constructed, social domain,
where integrations of new technologies
brush against custom and habit. To speak of
a “Twitterverse” that is both ubiquitous and
seemingly nowhere is to describe something
that has face value to our natural attitude; it
constitutes a “real” connective tissue that is
felt as an immediate feature of the interfaced
environment. Our vision plunges into the
depths of a glowing screen as it does the
phantasms of clouds across the sky or sun-
beams piercing the forest canopy. It is here
that virtualities are rendered in aesthetic
transactions of our subjective engagement,
where they append and fulfill the anticipa-
tion of experiencing an actual sense of
place. That is, they are not merely tricks,
games, or illusions. They are, like corrective
lenses, enhancements and elaborations of The reality of the virtual is the exten-
our visual field. sion of this “I can,” which for the time being
privileges the effects of lighting and sight.
T he phenomenological and logistical in- But one can imagine other sensorial virtual-
separability of technological virtuality ities that weigh upon our feeling of inhabit-
and everyday experience parallel that of ar- ing a particular place. Not least of these
chitecture and the environment more would be the potential to administer simu-
broadly. Building does not eliminate nature, lated olfactory sensations. A smelt virtually
but rather enjoins in conversation with it, might even convey further contortions of
speaking to its sensuous, elemental particu- spatiality—the onset of some mémoire invo-
larity while also fundamentally modifying lontaire of a long forgotten place: digital tea
it. Similarly, virtuality cannot, on perceptual and biscuits from childhood.
grounds at least, be thought of simply in op-
position to a “real” counterpart. Each re-
flects the other in an intricate and ever-shift-W hat I am calling real virtuality is
therefore a Janus-faced description of
ing composite of feeling and sensation that, technology subsuming perceived orient-
as a totality, no longer obeys the logic of a ations toward place: society becomes not
finite sense of place. only a spectacle but an encompassing
At the heart of inquiring into a topol- “missed connection.” No sooner is absence
ogy for which Facebook or satellite imaging made present than the gestural and commu-
figure prominently, we must turn to the con- nicative elaboration of our bearing on the
traction of global distances. Merleau-Ponty world is met with new intensities that enter
offers an instructive observation: “Every- into our subjective field of graspable and
thing I see is in principle within my reach, mutable potential. Real virtuality is appre-
at least within reach of my sight, and is hended only in the void left behind by its
marked on the map of the ‘I can’” [1]. The disappearances, after the sights and sounds
question then concerns what happens when to which we have grown accustomed are no-
this “I can” is multiplied and mediated by ticeably impoverished. Conversely, the field
technics, when the map of reality undergoes of perception is interfaced with endless
radical spatial distortion. streams of visual hyper-stimuli, the only
French urbanist and philosopher Paul remedy being to “space out.” This situation
Virilio recounts a discussion with his wife corresponds with what Virilio suggests as an
in which she remarks that “what she had “overexposure” of spatial perspective [3].
found most unbearable in the Nazi occupa- Filmic technique becomes the organizing
tion of France was the feeling of being cut architectural principle of this overly illumi-
off from the United States. At a stroke there nated landscape.
would be no more American magazines, no The architecture of the world is al-
more newspapers, and above all, no more ready and increasingly lived as a virtuality.
movies” [2]. Today, this sentiment is given Architecture has been challenged by cinema
a far more banal expression, as “FOMO,” or over its mastery of lighting, of imposing
a perpetual “fear of missing out” that binds special effects upon the action that unfolds
the tangible here and now to an ever-elusive in the street. Each of us, no longer just in-
elsewhere borne by visual media. habitants of architectural space, is the self-
Merleau-Ponty’s penumbral “I can” is appointed auteur behind our unique cyclop-
in such cases tempered by an absence made tic perspective and haphazard mise-en-
present, a “that which I cannot” in the face scene. We direct the spectacle of our lives
of infinitely manifestable possibilities. This across various platforms of recording and
tacit knowledge of negated possibility transmitting.
aligns with what we might inversely call a Recall that it was within the confound-
real virtuality. The idea of the virtual hangs ing spectacle of cinematic violence that a
decisively on its temporal dimension in this movie theater gunman killed one dozen peo-
regard, its sense of anticipation and reten- ple and injured more than two-dozen others
tion (a point elaborated by Bergson and later several years ago. But it is not the case that
adopted by Deleuze). “When can I see it?” an inability to distinguish between fiction
one asks; the where is implied or irrelevant. and reality is symptomatic of this incursion
30
of virtuality; such a spectacle differs cate-
gorically from really believing that the ma-
gician’s lovely assistant could vanish inside
of a box. And if there was a confusion of
Hollywood action and reality, it certainly
does not testify to the realism of the film.
Rather, it suggests a more totalizing phe-
nomenological symmetry between the ar-
chitect and the technologist. Reality seems
more cinematic.
The built environment, furnished in a
manner Heidegger might have described as
“present-at-hand,” becomes increasingly
“ready-to-hand” in its bearing upon us. We
discover a participatory sense of its objec-
tivity through which our desires and anxie-
ties are reflected back with disturbing im-
mediacy. To this effect, a restaurant chain
has recently capitalized on touch-screen
menus in an attempt to mitigate the embar-
rassment of customers wanting to order gra-
tuitous amounts of food.
Through this hybridized, architectonic
technics, we can look across a boundless
landscape. The world expands through the
emissions of screens and electronic inter-
faces, and our embodied relation to them ac-
quires a luminous quality. We can at any
moment “reach” across vast distances, mov-
ing through optical connections, nearing the
speed of light.
How to coordinate a body in an envi-
ronment defined by its perceptual utility
more than spatiality? The result seems to be
division, disunified and strained attention
spans that can no longer tolerate emptiness
or equilibrium. A new campaign for split-
screen “smart” televisions advertises the
convenience of being able to roam around a
bombed-out warscape in a first-person
shooter while simultaneously keeping ap-
prised of the football score. Perception must
in this way increasingly answer to demarca-
tions of time far more than of space. Rapid
successions of appearances—that is, mon-
tage—characterize our trading off of per-
spective. We orient ourselves as both spec-
tator and auteur, mastering the art of se-
quencing and setting our environment into
motion. Channel surfing, web browsing,
news aggregation, instant messaging, and so
on—these are not the activities of a flâneur
but of a gambler, an individual, suggests
Walter Benjamin, who is motivated by ec-
stasies of time more than space. Whosoever
is lost to the rapid ordering of appearances
and lighting effects can be set suddenly
adrift, inhabiting the perceived role of the
Joker, now an audience member, now the
Dark Knight himself.
W ith the introduction of video moni-
tors, interfaces, and handheld or
wearable devices, the architect and technol-
ogist creep ever closer together. Everything
is wallpapered with digital visualization.
What does this mean for the designability of
an environment?
Place can now be seen as a moment in
a sequence, as something we “check into”—
a time-stamped pin-drop on a virtual map.
The spatial sequencing into temporal
units—i.e., events or posts on a timeline
feed—may force the architect to become
both set designer and cinematographer.
Meanwhile, the city starts to resemble an
airport terminal in its infrastructural layout,
punctuated by wireless “hot spots” and pub-
lic device charging docks. These amenities
seek to accommodate instantaneous move-
ment across great distances.
Here, we might return to the ungainly,
unwieldy aspect of technology. It comes as
the blinding flash of daylight upon stepping
out of the theater, the impaired conversabil-
ity of the obsessive texter. But we cannot
mistake these lapses of habituation for a re-
turn to our everyday senses. What makes
virtuality real is that it has fundamentally
changed the architecture of social reality; it
does not set upon us as a Matrix-like dissim-
ulation from the really real. We cannot, fi-
nally, leave the cave of shadows for a Pla-
tonic light. Virtuality, as a basic function of
technology that has grown increasingly
complex, is part and parcel of the naive eve-
rydayness of life. In its immediate quality, it
enters into relation with all other nodes of
our perceptual field, modifying the nature of
the whole.
Neil Harbisson, a colorblind artist and
the first person to gain government recogni-
tion as a cyborg, perhaps illustrates in an ex-
31
treme way the indissolubility of real virtual-
ity. Via an antenna embedded into his skull,
Harbisson can “hear” the sky and “listen” to
his mother’s eyes, as frequencies of light are
digitally transmitted as sound waves. “I
don’t perceive my antenna as a device, I per-
ceive it as a part of my body, I perceive it as
an organ,” he says [4]. Much as the cyborg
offers Donna Haraway an image to dissolve
gender essentialism, it undercuts the as-
sumption of any essential unity of the real.
Modes of perception are diverse, synes-
thetic, constellational, and shifting. To the
extent the virtual can “substitute” the real, it
is indistinguishable from cyborgism in me-
diating somatic movement and perception.
The architecture of the world today is
of a similarly hybridized quality. Perhaps
what is needed, then, is a cyborg phenome-
nology, capable of investigating rapidly
shifting perceptual fields and adapting to the
body modifications of the embodied subject.
Only by thinking through the perceptual
limits and horizons of the virtual can we
come to a rigorous understanding of how to
fabricate better physical and digital archi-
tecture. Simply drawing users away from
the tempest of virtuality does not remedy the
disappearance of distances any more than an
occupied France could forget that feeling of
being cut off from America.
The task for design might instead be-
come one of fulfilling, within that digital
trance of the virtual, the function architec-
ture has always performed: to create a sense
of place and restfulness, to offer shelter
from the storm.
Notes
1. M. Merleau-Ponty. The Primacy of Per-
ception J. M. Edie, ed. (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern Univ. Press, 1964), p. 2.
2. P. Virilio. War and Cinema (NY: Verso,
1989), p. 11.
3. P. Virilio. Lost Dimension (Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e), 2012), p. 30.
4. Niel Harbisson. “TEDWeekends: How a
Colorblind Cyborg ‘Hears’ Color.” The
Huffington Post. July 26, 2013.
Navigating by the Light
Paul Krafel
Krafel is a naturalist, educator, and author of Seeing Nature (Chelsea Green, 1998). He is Administrator of the Chrysalis Charter
School in Palo Cedro, California, a teacher-led, science-and-nature program. paul@chrysalischarterschool.com. © 2014 Paul Kra-
fel.
I n this EAP commentary, I weave some
strands of my teaching experience with
some design principles advocated by ar-
chitect Christopher Alexander. The fact that
these related strands from different profes-
sions fit together will, I hope, contribute to
a synergy of constructive possibilities.
In The Nature of Order and his other
writings, Alexander champions “incremen-
tal development” [1]. Rather than imposing
a design upon a locale, he prefers to walk the
site, develop a plan, and then proceed with
construction in a way that allows the site to
give feedback for identifying and modifying
subsequent steps in the construction pro-
cess.
He sees this approach to design and
building as nurturing the holistic nature of
life, allowing a creation to emerge through
progressive differentiation in a way similar
to babies emerging from within fertilized
eggs. The architect does not put together be-
forehand all the parts of a building, which is
then assembled. Instead, he or she helps the
totality of the creation to emerge. Alexander
insists there is a power and sanctity in this
organic process that increases the wholeness
and life of the completed work.
I follow a similar kind of “incremental
development” in my teaching at Chrysalis
Charter School, a small, kindergarten-
through-eighth-grade, science-and-nature
school in northern California that my wife
and I co-founded in 1996. In the school’s
ninth year, I was teaching literature to the
school’s eighth graders. We were reading
excerpts of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-
Reliance. As students read aloud from the
work, I asked them to give voice to the
words, not just read them. The students did
so, with increasing energy, going round in a
group circle, returning to me. I thought that
I, too, should give voice to the words and
thereby model an even more “out-there-
ness.” I approached a student and, looking
into his eyes, sincerely spoke “Trust thy-
self.” To the next student I said, “Every
heart vibrates to that iron string. Trust thy-
self. Never imitate.” Around I went, looking
each student in his or her eyes.
This experience led, in the next few
weeks, to my sharing what I called “eye
shine.” Talking about it as a class, we were
more readily able to look into each other’s
eyes and see a spirit shining within. This ef-
fort nourished a respect and trust that led
over the months to exultant reading of po-
etry and the emergence of a class shout,
“My beacon fire is lit!” My sharing this de-
velopment with my fellow teachers led one
to write: “Encouraging the light within each
student to shine brighter.” A month later, we
as a faculty realized that this was our mis-
sion statement, which we weren’t even
thinking about until this sentence emerged,
unasked for and spontaneously.
T his mission statement has made a tre-
mendous difference to our school: it de-
fines and focuses organizational aims in a
directed, powerful way. This result sur-
prised me because, at my previous employ-
ment, I had experienced hours of staff time
wasted at meetings where disparate “stake-
holders” gathered to produce a mission
statement. The result was an elegant-sound-
ing “public-relations” document that had no
real meaning and drew away organizational
energy because it referred to nothing real.
These two contrasting experiences
with mission statements mirror Alexander’s
two dramatically different approaches to de-
sign and construction. Our mission state-
ment of “encouraging the light” emerged
organically over many months from what
we were exploring and in response to the
children who are the reason for the school.
Some educators are dubious that
Chrysalis can be organized around “the
light.” They ask, “How do you measure the
‘light’?” These skeptics want an absolute
32
number similar to numerical scores on
standardized tests. If “the light” can’t be
specified in this way, then it must be subjec-
tive. At Chrysalis, however, we accept that
this “light” is an objective reality. A teacher
doesn’t need absolute numbers to navigate
by it. Rather, one focuses on relative
changes. What things make the “light”
brighter? What things tend to make the
“light” dim? The aim is always to navigate
toward more “light.”
Frequently, I’ve had to defend our
mission statement from critics. Here is a
typical conversation:
“Yes, encouraging the light sounds
nice but what about the real work of teach-
ing the kids?”
“The real work is encouraging the
light.”
“Yes, but what are you teaching
them?”
“That depends on the teacher and the
students.”
“But you need to teach the grade-level
standards.”
“No, we are a chartered public school
governed by our charter. We are exploring
a different way of organizing public educa-
tion.”
“But how can you assure parents that
their child is receiving all the grade-level
standards?”
“Parents don’t ask. They want to see
the light shining within their child.”
“Well, how can you assure the State of
California that your students are being
taught the grade-level standards?”
“By the state’s standardized tests. Our
students on average perform significantly
higher than schools of similar de-
mographics.”
“But are you teaching to the stand-
ards?”
“No, we are encouraging the light
within each student to shine brighter. And
one of the ways you encourage the light is
offering each student the experience of un-
derstanding the concepts we are working
with. So it is not enough to cover the mate-
rial and pass a test. That does not neces-
sarily encourage the light. The key concern
is whether the child experiences under-
standing. We ‘light up’ when we understand
something. That’s what we focus on at
Chrysalis. In addition, a student’s light can
shines brighter when he or she knows they
are safely within a kind, gentle environment,
So we spend a lot of time working to trans-
form the ‘unkind’ culture that kids bring
from television and other schools into a kind
one. We greet students as they arrive on
campus. Our ‘light shines’ when we are out
in nature so we take the students out into na-
ture every week. Our ‘light shines’ when we
are known and honored as individuals, so
we have structured the school to have small
classes that emphasize helpful feedback ra-
ther than judgmental grades.”
N avigating by the light brings me to an-
other parallel with Alexander’s work,
which unfolds in a similar “subjective” way.
He explains:
…. Let’s say, if I’m trying to make a modest
building, what do I do? I do consciously try
to make the building move from its not very
good current state toward a state in which
you’re more likely to experience “God” in
that building. And that tells me very often
what to do. It’s not just some sort of great
wish, it actually tells me, “Look, make this
column bigger”…. [2].
The relative presence of “God” re-
ferred to here obviously can’t be measured
quantitatively. Rather, like us teachers at
Chrysalis, Alexander is navigating by rela-
tive differences. For him, the question of
relative life and wholeness in a design keeps
reappearing throughout the making process
so that the end product might become a slow
accumulation of many smaller decisions all
.
moving in the same intentional direction to- transformation. The student was dutifully
ward the worthy ends of appropriateness, doing the activity but was frustrated because
beauty, and belonging. he knew he somehow wasn’t “getting it.”
I went out to find a specimen that
would fit exactly in the middle of the gap.
T he last question I want to address here
is why moments of intuitive perception,
important for both Alexander and Chrysalis
When the
flowering
student added the specimen to his
sequence, a spontaneous
teaching, sustain “lighting up”? What are “WOW!” burst forth, and his face lit up. As
we intuitively perceiving in these special Bortoft explains, “In a moment of intuitive
moments, and why do they inspire sponta- perception, the particular instance is seen as
neous joy? Helpful here is the work of phi- a living manifestation of the universal” [4].
losopher and science educator Henri
Bortoft, who explains that this moment of
insight is: S o what is it about phenomenology that I
think I’ve understood, even though I
would never claim to be a phenomenolo-
not to be thought of as a generalization from gist? What I think I understand is that there
observations, produced by abstracting from is a way of seeing that can happen through
different instances something that is com- direct experience. These moments of under-
mon to them. If this result were the case, one standing are wonderful and they “light us
would arrive at an abstracted unity with the up.” They are the core of Alexander’s ap-
dead quality of a lowest common factor… In proach to understanding and making. They
a moment of intuitive perception, the partic- are the core of our pedagogical efforts at
ular instance is seen as a living manifesta- Chrysalis.
tion of the universal [3]. These similarities between Chrysalis
and Alexander’s work help me as a teaching
About the time I read this passage, I professional to feel less alone. These simi-
had witnessed just such a moment for one of larities strengthen my desire to keep navi-
my students. I had been field-testing a sci- gating “by the light.” I hope the experiences
ence unit that used a local plant to get ele- I have described here with my Chrysalis pu-
mentary students interested in field biology. pils might, in a parallel way, strengthen the
Part of the unit was on how flowers develop desire of architects to work in the manner
into seed-containing fruits. One of the activ- explored by Alexander.
ities (called “forms of the process”) asked
students to collect ten specimens of the Notes
readily found Erodium botrys (commonly 1. C. Alexander, The Nature of Order, four
known as long beaked stork’s bill) at differ- vols. (Berkeley, CA: Center for Environ-
ent stages of flowering development and mental Structure, 2002–05).
then arrange the specimens in temporal se- 2. From an interview available at: www.pat-
quence. ternlanguage.com/archives/wen-
One student’s set of specimens was dykohn/wendykohninterviewedited.htm
such that there was a gap in the middle, and [last accessed June 24, 2014].
he could not see any broader pattern. He had 3. H. Bortoft, Counterfeit and Authentic
some examples of the flower’s dropping its Wholes: Finding a Means for Dwelling in
petals and its ovules starting to swell; he Nature, in D. Seamon and R. Mugerauer,
also had some examples of the plant style eds., Dwelling, Place and Environment
growing progressively longer. But in be- (Dordrecht: Martinus-Nijoff, 1985), p.
tween was a gap preventing him from seeing 296.
all his specimens as part of one, dramatic 4. Ibid.
33
Points of View & Objectivity: The Phenomenologist’s Challenge
Yi-Fu Tuan
Tuan is Professor of Geography Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include Romantic Geography (Univ. of
Wisconsin Press, 2014); and Humanist Geography (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2012). yifu@geography.wisc.edu. © 2014 Yi-Fu Tuan.
understand the phenomenologist’s
I challenge as that of embracing both
“point of view” and “objectivity,”
which, as I see it, is also that of intellectual
endeavor at its most ambitious. Let me illus-
trate what I mean by these two terms, first,
at the microscale; then, at the macroscale.
Microscale
What I see is always a point of view—my
point of view. What I hear, by contrast, is
more circumambient and so less subjective.
What I smell is even less subjective, more
“in the round,” and more a quality that em-
anates from something “out there.”
Heidegger, I believe, once praised the sense
of smell for that reason. The visual, being a
point of view, is—as I just said—subjective,
and yet that subjectivity diminishes as the
viewer approaches the object so viewed.
I see the Washington Monument from
afar. It is in my field of vision. I dominate it.
As I approach it, however, this is less and
less true, until under its shadow I feel it to
be the looming presence (subject) and me a
mere speck (an object) in its shadow. Phe-
nomenologists, eschewing objectivity, tend
to emphasize the “point of view” or the sub-
jective. This is a mistake, for the human ex-
perience includes both.
Point of view is from somewhere. By
contrast, the view from nowhere is from
God’s position way up in the sky, hence ob-
jective. (The terminology of “somewhere”
and “nowhere” is Thomas Nagel’s.) We are
capable of both. What we are not capable of
or, rather, what we are not good at is to see
from someone else’s position. Chaos would
ensue if this were all there is to perception,
but of course it isn’t. By virtue of our innate
ability to see also from “nowhere,” we share
a common world.
A simple experiment will show this to
be true. Put a three-dimensional model of
hills, valleys, streams, and farms on a table.
Have two persons A and B stand on opposite
sides. Ask A to describe what B sees from
his side of the table and vice versa. The task
will be difficult for both, and yet both can
describe with relative ease what they can see
from a point high above, even though nei-
ther has been there!
Macroscale
The art of the novel peaked in the19th cen-
tury. It was also in the 19th century that so-
cial science and phenomenology were being
established. These three endeavors to under-
stand human reality had much in common.
The novelist strove to capture the society of
the time. Madame Bovary had the subtitle
“moeurs de province.” Balzac’s La Comédie
Humaine was a monumental effort to depict
life in all its variety. The great novelists
sought to be objective by drawing attention,
as would a sociologist, to the social and eco-
nomic forces at work. They also provided
technical information of the sort one might
find in a manual. Thomas Hardy described
how a tractor worked and wasn’t bothered
by a departure from plot line. Herman Mel-
ville famously—or perhaps infamously—
made a part of Moby Dick read like a tract
for whaling.
Also on the objective side of the ledger
in the work of a great novelist is a large,
overarching theme such as the nature of war
in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, or the nature of
time in Proust’s À la recherche du temps
perdu. This large, overarching theme is the
novelist’s and is, in that sense, a point of
view and subjective. But my point is that a
theme so large and inclusive is, humanly
speaking, a view from nowhere, a God-like
view, within which is a host of individuals,
each of whom has a past, a socioeconomic
position, and a distinctive perspective.
Now, to the extent that phenomenolo-
gists engage in “psychological description,”
they are poets, short-story writers, or novel-
ists. Heidegger, frustrated by the inade-
quacy of prose to capture human reality, re-
sorted to the poetry of Hölderlin, but he
34
would have done better, be a great phenom-
enologist and novelist if, in a masterwork
peopled by hundreds of characters, he in-
cluded a poet named Hölderlin! In the
twenty-first century, a phenomenologist-
novelist might not feature a poet in his work,
but he would surely have to include, besides
bakers and car dealers, academic types such
as feminists and Marxists. In other words,
the issue is not phenomenology being cri-
tiqued by feminists and Marxists, but rather
that they appear as colorful characters in a
masterwork of phenomenology.
What is the use of such a masterwork
in phenomenology? The use is twofold: one
that it is a mirror to society but, then, if it is
indeed such a mirror, it is also a plan for so-
ciety’s improvement. The usual plans de-
signed by government and commercial bu-
reaus are too thin and abstract to serve that
function adequately. On the other hand, the
poet’s or short-story writer’s work, phenom-
enological in its psychological acumen but
without the broader frame that is also phe-
nomenology’s calling, is too dense and lim-
ited to be of use other than for a narrow pur-
pose, such as building a homeless shelter or
an airport. A masterwork in phenomenology
rises above these limitations.
A Theoretical Human Endeavor
Finally, just as a great realistic novel has
many characters, none of whom actually ex-
isted, so a great phenomenological treatise
can be deemed a work of socio-economic
and psychological realism even though it
contains individuals none of whom actually
existed but who are postulated to represent
a human type or hint at a human condition.
In this sense, phenomenology is “theoreti-
cal.” Is this a fault? Not really, for this bent
toward theory and abstraction is a weakness
in all mental endeavors. Only God who
knows the number of hairs on our head is
thoroughly and completely empirical.
Considering the Relationship between
Phenomenology and Science
Julio Bermudez
Bermudez is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He co-
founded the Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality in 2007. His current research includes the empirical investigation of
extraordinary architectural experiences and a neuroscience study of contemplative architecture. http://faculty.cua.edu/bermudez/ ;
bermudez@cua.edu. © 2014 Julio Bermudez.
I n this essay, I discuss what I see as cen-
tral to the advancement of EAP in the
next quarter century: developing a so-
phisticated, robust phenomenological dia-
logue with analytic science. This dialogue is
necessary because it is increasingly diffi-
cult, if not impossible (theoretically and
practically), to advance insights, observa-
tions, or allegations without offering empir-
ical evidence.
Quite simply, rhetorical craftsman-
ship, logical argument, poetic writing, and
impeccable credentials are no longer
enough to cement the legitimacy of research
claims. In their place, science, the source of
most of our practical knowledge and tech-
nology, has de facto become today’s only
widely agreed method to validate arguments
and hypotheses. Science is therefore a fun-
damental power broker in all important de-
cisions affecting us, be they related to envi-
ronmental, psychological, social, political,
or economic matters.
Signs of this condition abound. The
rapid rise of evidence-based design is but
one example of an accentuating trend. We
can be upset and enumerate the many prob-
lems and biases behind this state of affairs,
but the fact remains uncontestable. Instead
of resisting, a more productive path would
be to think of science as another perspec-
tive, language, and method that can be used
when considering phenomenological ques-
tions, insights, and recommendations. We
teachers, professionals, and designers know
this very well. If we are to engage students,
clients, and users productively, we must
speak to their concerns, in their language,
using their logic.
I s this matter-of-fact recognition indica-
tive of a capitulation to an instrumentalist,
reductionist, and materialistic worldview?
Are we betraying the spirit of phenomenol-
ogy? Here, we must carefully avoid rushing
to an answer grounded in the claim that phe-
nomenologists profoundly distrust, if not re-
ject, the natural sciences as a means for
probing phenomenological issues. This per-
spective began with the compelling founda-
tional work of such thinkers as Gaston
Bachelard and Steen Rasmussen. The per-
spective progressively became mainstream
with architectural theorist Alberto Pérez-
Gómez’s insightful Architecture and the
Crisis of Modern Science [1].
These and other phenomenologically-
inspired thinkers asked how anyone can ac-
cept positivist reductionism to describe,
much less pinpoint or explain, the complex
thickness of lived experience. These think-
ers claimed that, since subjective experience
is inaccessible from without, it cannot be
probed directly by scientific method and
therefore must always remain beyond em-
pirical measurability.
I would argue that this formulaic view
of phenomenology as anti-scientific has
never been true. Phenomenology began with
founder Edmund Husserl’s famous exhorta-
tion of “back to the things themselves” in re-
sponse to obscure philosophical analyses
and abstractions lacking little relation to
lived experience. This “going back to
things” involved a contemplative science of
sorts: the direct, unbiased observation of
first-person experience of reality and con-
sciousness. Husserl developed a specific
method, the “phenomenological reduction,”
as a way to put aside all content of con-
sciousness to “objectively” access what is
35
really present in experience. I don’t neces-
sarily defend or criticize Husserl’s “reduc-
tion.” Rather, I bring it forward to highlight
his affinity with scientific method in the
sense of taking nothing for granted and in-
stead seeking to apply objective observation
to subjective psychological events [2].
I f phenomenology’s beginning is marked
by Husserl’s aim to bring a kind of scien-
tific sensibility into matters of philosophy,
other phenomenologists following Husserl
used science as a springboard to clarify their
understandings of phenomenological princi-
ples and conclusions.
For example, philosopher Maurice
Merleau-Ponty criticized standard philoso-
phy and science by arguing that human cog-
nition is unavoidably embodied and there-
fore neither purely intellectual and detached
nor merely physiological and reactive. He
painted a deliciously nuanced account of our
lived world replete with sensuality, emo-
tions, contextuality, and concreteness [3].
Merleau-Ponty’s critique of science did not,
however, mean ignoring or eliminating it. In
fact, some commentators have argued that
he saw the future of phenomenology as em-
bracing some type of “naturalization”—in
other words, a disciplined, skillful coupling
of phenomenology and the natural sciences
[4].
Another productive conversation be-
tween science and phenomenology is seen
in the work of philosopher Hans-Georg
Gadamer, who worked to demonstrate that
interpretations are the only way to penetrate,
however superficially, any claim on reality
[5]. Turning Husserl’s “reduction” on its
head, Gadamer argued that it is the preju-
dices we bring to any particular situation
that make interpretation at all possible,
hence the fundamental flaw and naiveté of evidence supporting their claims (e.g., in en- gather data, conduct analyses, and produce
ordinary science when it demands or ex- vironmental psychology, gestalt psychol- findings that convincingly characterize phe-
pects “objectivity.” ogy, anthropology, geography and sociol- nomena. From one point of view, the aim
ogy) [8]. Empirical evidence was also cen- can be phrased as the construction of proba-

O ne can also look to the latest phenome- tral to Christopher Alexander and Thomas
nological criticism of modernity and Thiis-Evesen’s insightful observation and
the scientific project. According to philoso- “cataloguing” of phenomenology-based ty-
bilistic empirical mappings of phenomena.
Though some phenomenologists
might disagree with this aim, I don’t think it
pher Jean-Luc Marion, our encounter with pologies of architectural forms (pattern lan- is farfetched or phenomenologically inap-
reality transcends us at every turn by what guage and archetypes, respectively) [9]. propriate. One can argue that concrete steps
he calls its “saturation” [6]. He argues that This pragmatic attitude continues today. For in this direction began in the early 1980s via
the nature of an event always exceeds our example, architectural theorists Alberto Pé- the insights and leadership of Chilean scien-
capability to make sense of it, much less to rez-Gómez and Juhani Pallasmaa empha- tist Francisco Varela, among others. This ef-
control it. At best, we can deploy a “reduc- size the claims of neuroscience that support fort led to the development of neurophe-
tion” (in Husserl’s sense) so that we can ac- long-held phenomenological positions re- nomenology, an area of scientific investiga-
cess the “given” (the phenomenon) as gift. garding human cognition, perception, em- tion that has steadily grown in significance
In this act, we may realize a transcendence bodiment, and environmental experience in in the last two decades [13]. My call to use
of being and some mode of spiritual pres- general [10]. scientific method to test phenomenological
ence. Philosopher Karsten Harries makes a If there is nothing new in using empir- claims also parallels efforts in “experi-
similar point: that reality is real precisely ical evidence to strengthen phenomenologi- mental philosophy” (“X-Phi”), an innova-
because it does not conform to our desires cal claims, there is some novelty in the in- tive reflective practice working to examine
but rather resists and, sooner or later, wins creasing mention of scientific understand- empirically philosophical topics that have
over our best attempt at subjugating it. The ings in the phenomenological literature. resisted scrutiny via more conventional an-
phenomenological conclusion is that reality This development may be an indication that alytical reasoning [14].
transcends human beings. However power- the natural and social sciences are finally There is no reason why we cannot ju-
ful, instrumentalist science and applied beginning to consider the phenomenologi- diciously bring science into phenomenolog-
technologies cannot ultimately solve the di- cal critique of science that began with Hus- ical inquiry, devise appropriate methodo-
lemmas of human existence [7]. serl’s work in the early twentieth century. logical adaptations and, thereby, lead scien-
Perhaps what is most remarkable tists into new considerations and questions
about these phenomenological insights is
they did not lead phenomenology to radical T o contribute to research and practice in
the twenty-first century, phenomenolo-
subjectivism, relativism, or nihilism—an gists must find ways to better authenticate
that evade them due to their quantitative
training and worldview. In fact, some suc-
cessful examples of this line of inquiry al-
end for some philosophical positions such as their discoveries and claims [11]. How, in ready exist. Running the risk of self-promo-
existentialism and post-structuralism. Nor other words, might phenomenological re- tion, I would like to highlight two research
did these phenomenological insights lead to search expand its typical emphasis on projects I have been successfully conduct-
a rejection of science but only to the refuta- smaller-scale self-observation and herme- ing that manage to investigate highly quali-
tion of scientism, its most simplistic repre- neutics to include empirical measurement tative claims within a scientific, empirical
sentation. providing more objective validation to oth- framework.
Here, we ask the reason for such erwise unreliable or unverifiable first-per- The first of these projects is a large sur-
equanimous response. I suggest that, in their son accounts or relativistic qualitative inter- vey on “Extraordinary Architectural Experi-
heart of hearts, phenomenologists are prag- pretations. ences” that seeks to map the phenomenolog-
matists. They truly want to deal with the ex- Quantifying the qualitative dimen- ical nature of these transformative events. In
perience of the world as lived and to under- sions of any phenomenon may ultimately be this research, I use a very large number of
stand human being-in-the-world. They are impossible, and I am not advocating an ab- self-reported experiential accounts to vali-
not keen on generating far-fetched philo- solute threshold of trustworthiness (which is date (via statistical analysis) otherwise un-
sophical models or adopting radical ideo- never really possible in a positivist mode of reliable first-person accounts [15]. The sec-
logical positions. Given this no-nonsense at- research either). In this regard, the social ond research project uses neuroscience to
titude, phenomenologists are ready to accept sciences have developed a wide range of probe the phenomenology of contemplative
experience-based knowledge and utilize it qualitative methods to identify less tangible spaces. Here, I employ non-invasive brain
for advancing lived reality either actively aspects of cultural, educational, psychologi- imaging (e.g., functional Magnetic Reso-
(e.g., via the design of the built environ- cal, and related phenomena [12]. nance Imaging, or fMRI) to gauge physio-
ment) or receptively (e.g., via human inter- One also notes that recent develop- logically the cerebral activity of individuals
action with that built environment). ments in neuroscience have allowed re- “experiencing” contemplative environ-
This pragmatic attitude has been a sig- searchers to non-invasively observe the neu- ments [16].
nificant part of EAP since its beginning. The ral correlates of mental states. Adopting the
scholarship of Yi-Fu Tuan, Christian Norb- scientific method phenomenologically
erg-Schulz, Edward Relph, and David Sea- means for phenomenologists to develop hy-
mon always included references to scientific potheses, deploy practical procedures,
T he adoption of novel, non-reductionist
methods of scientific observation and

36
analysis should not unsettle phenomenolo-
gists because I emphasize emphatically that
my critique does not require that more con-
ventional phenomenological modes and
methods be forsaken. My critique does im-
ply, however, that phenomenologists con-
sider a more encompassing, scientifically-
engaged mode of phenomenology. Just as
we cannot speak of one unique paradigm to
describe all phenomena in physics (e.g.,
Newtonian, quantum, and relativistic mod-
els all have their accuracies but at different
space-time scales), one mode of phenome-
nology cannot address the inexhaustible
realm of human being and experience.
Forcing a choice between phenome-
nology and science or the subordination of
one to the other are false options. A more
comprehensive approach requires a respect-
ful, judicious, and mutually beneficial dia-
logue between phenomenology and science.
Let us do it!
Notes
1. S. Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962); G.
Bachelard. The Poetics of Space (Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 1964); A. Pérez-
Gómez, Architecture and the Crisis of
Modern Science (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1983).
2. Here, some readers may object to my
analogy between Husserl’s phenomeno-
logical reduction and scientific observa-
tion; see my discussion in J. Bermudez,
Non-Ordinary Architectural Phenome-
nologies: Non-Dualist Experiences and
Husserl’s Reduction, Environmental and
Architectural Phenomenology 21, 2
(2010): 11–15.
3. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of
Perception (NY: Routledge, 1962).
4. J. Petitot, F. Varela, B. Pachoud, and J.-
M. Roy, eds., Naturalizing Phenomenol-
ogy: Issues in Contemporary Phenome-
nology and Cognitive Science (Stanford,
CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999).
5. H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd
edn. (NY: Crossroad, 2004).
6. J.-L. Marion. Reduction and Givenness
(Evanston, IL.: Northwestern Univ.
Press, 1998).
7. K. Harries, Transcending Aesthetics, in
J.Bermudez, ed., Transcending Archi-
tecture (Washington, DC: CUA Press,
forthcoming).
8. E.g., Y.-F. Tuan, Topophilia (NY: Pren-
tice-Hall, 1974); C. Norberg Schulz, Ex-
istence, Space and Architecture (NY:
Praeger, 1971); E. Relph, Place and
Placelessness (London: Pion, 1976); D.
Seamon, A Geography of the Lifeworld
(NY: St. Martin's, 1979).
9. C. Alexander, A Pattern Language (NY:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1977); C. Alexan-
der, The Timeless Way of Building (NY:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1979); T. Thiis-
Evensen, Archetypes in Architecture
(Oslo: Norwegian Univ. Press, 1987).
10. E.g., Alberto Pérez-Gómez drew on re-
cent neuroscience findings in a lecture
he presented at the sixth annual sympo-
sium of the Forum for Architecture, Cul-
ture, and Spirituality, held in Toronto in
June, 2014). In February, 2014, at the
New School of Architecture and Design
in San Diego, Juhani Pallasmaa partici-
pated in a dialogue with neuroscientist
Michael Arbib. Pallasmaa was also a
keynote speaker at the 2014 conference
sponsored by the Academy of Neurosci-
ence for Architecture (ANFA) and held
at the Salk Institute.
11. On trustworthiness as understood phe-
nomenologically, see, for example, D.
Seamon, A Way of Seeing People and
Place: Phenomenology in Environment-
Behavior Research. In S. Wapner, J.
Demick, T. Yamamoto, and H Minami,
37
eds., Theoretical Perspectives in Envi-
ronment-Behavior Research (NY: Ple-
num, 2000), pp. 157–78.
12. E.g., C. Moustakas, Phenomenological
Research Methods (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 1994); T. Black, Doing
Quantitative Research in the Social Sci-
ences (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
1999); D. Amedeo, R. G. Golledge, and
R. J. Stimson, Person-Environment-Be-
havior Research. NY: Guilford Press,
2009); C. Grbich, Qualitative Data
Analysis (London: Sage, 2012).
13. F. Varela, Neurophenomenology: A
Methodological Remedy for the Hard
Problem, Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 3 (1996): 330-349; also see A.
Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Con-
structing the Conscious Brain (NY:
Vintage, 2012).
14. Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols, eds.,
Experimental Philosophy (NY: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2008).
15. J. Bermudez and B. Ro, Memory, Social
Interaction and Communicability in
Extraordinary Experiences of Architec-
ture, in C. Jarrett, K.-H. Kim and N.
Senske, eds., Proceedings of the 2013
ARCC Conference (Charlotte, NC:
Univ. of North Carolina), pp. 677–684;
J. Bermudez. Empirical Aesthetics: The
Body and Emotion in Extraordinary Ar-
chitectural Experiences, in P. Plowright
and B. Gamper, eds., Proceedings of
the 2011 ARCC Conference (Lawrence
Technology University: Detroit, MI)
pp. 369–380.
16. See my lecture, Architecturally Induced
Contemplative States, delivered at the
2012 Academy of Neuroscience for Ar-
chitecture (ANFA) conference; this lec-
ture is available at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PalHtOr
Y9E4#t=21_#1 [last accessed June 20,
2014].
Varieties of Phenomenological Description
Edward Relph
Relph is Emeritus Professor of Geography in the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. Relph
wrote one of the earliest phenomenologies of place—Place and Placelessness (Pion, 1976/2008). His most recent book is Toronto:
Transformations in a City and Its Region (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). ted.relph@gmail.com. © 2014 Edward Relph.
avid Seamon’s invitation to write
D something for this anniversary edi-
tion of EAP led me to reflect on
books that have had a long-term influence
on my thinking about place and landscape.
I soon realized there are a handful of
writings I have often turned to because they
are inspiring models of phenomenological
description. I have referred to these works
infrequently in my writing, and some may
not be familiar to EAP readers, so this invi-
tation provides me with an opportunity to
share them, if only as brief synopses
scarcely doing them justice. The fact that
none of these works are recent probably re-
flects my distaste for the current tendency to
look at the world through theoretical lenses.
What I mean by phenomenological de-
scription is broader than the philosophical
method developed by Husserl and used by
Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and others.
While the work of these philosophers has in-
fluenced my thinking, the approaches I
mention here have different, unrelated prov-
enances. Most make no reference to phe-
nomenology, but I regard them as implicitly
phenomenological because they all demon-
strate ways to return to experiences of things
in themselves. They attempt, as Edward
Said claimed of humanism, to dissolve what
William Blake called “mind forg’d mana-
cles” for the purposes of reflective under-
standing. Several focus on ways of seeing, a
theme that corresponds with my interests in
landscapes and the visual properties of
places. I begin with those [1].
I n 1786, as Goethe set out on a journey to
Italy to escape his problems in Weimar,
he wrote in his diary that he was determined
to see “with clear fresh eyes.” He looked
carefully at everything he encountered—ar-
chitecture, trash, trees, clouds, mountains,
landscapes, people, and the fashions they
wore. At one point, he exclaimed, “I have
spent the day just looking and looking. It is
the same in art as in life. The deeper one
penetrates, the broader grows the view.”
This idea of “clear fresh eyes’ has served me
as a sort of touchstone as an unprejudiced
way to study places, and the results it has
given are a basis for trusting my own judg-
ments and reducing dependence on the opin-
ions and theories of others [2].
I regard renowned critic of art and so-
ciety John Ruskin as among the very best
landscape interpreters. I recently viewed an
exhibition of some of his thousands of de-
tailed drawings and paintings, many never
published, all based on careful, precise ob-
servation. Apparently, he made them to help
38
in understanding the characteristics of dif-
ferent types of rocks, plants, colors, clouds,
mountains, buildings, and townscapes. This
understanding then informed the critical
commentaries he wrote and published.
To prepare for The Stones of Venice, a
book that influenced William Morris, Mar-
cel Proust, Gandhi, and many others, Ruskin
had scaffolding erected in the cathedral of
San Marco so that he could draw the capital
of every column as well as other decorations
[sketch below]. This exercise gave him an
intense, direct knowledge of gothic architec-
ture that enabled him, in effect, to think him-
self into the experiences of the people who
had made what he was looking at—experi-
ences based in deep convictions and beliefs
that Ruskin claimed were instinctively ex-
pressed in the carved decorations.
By comparison, he regarded the gothic
revival architecture and manufactured prod-
ucts surrounding his life in the Victorian age
as trivial and thoughtless, no matter how
precisely made. Insofar as they revealed an-
ything, it was a division of labor that had
broken human beings into “small crumbs
and fragments of life” [3].
I am especially intrigued by Ruskin’s
attempt, as an art critic, to identify different
forms and functions of imagination because
imagination is a phenomenon really acces-
sible only to phenomenological approaches.
Ruskin defined it as “the power of seeing
with a vividness that would not have oc-
curred to vague memory.” He used both his
own experience as a draftsman and his ex-
tensive knowledge of landscape painting to
disclose three interconnected aspects of im-
agination, which he described as associa-
tive, contemplative, and penetrative. For
Ruskin, seeing, thinking and imagination
were faculties to be held in balance as a way
to get to the heart of the matter [4].

W riting a little over a century later,
Gaston Bachelard had the advantage
of being familiar with phenomenological
methods when he explored the types of
spaces “seized upon” by the imagination.
“Only phenomenology,” he wrote, “can
help us to restore the subjectivity of images,
and to measure their fullness, their strength
and their transubjectivity.” His interpretive
source was poetry rather than painting, and
the poetic images he considered were spe-
cifically those of “felicitous space.” These
images led him to identify the imaginative
functions of houses, attics, drawers, nests,
shells, corners, and what he called “the inti-
mate immensity” implicit in each. Every
place, no matter how small, is simultane-
ously discrete and an imagined microcosm
of the world [5].
For her wonderful book, The Ecology
of Imagination in Childhood, Edith Cobb
used autobiographical accounts of child-
hood to investigate the role of spontaneity
and creative imagination in children’s expe-
riences of nature. What she found was that
“Experience in childhood is never formal or
abstract. Nature for the child is sheer sen-
sory experience.” But children grow up and
evolve out of nature into culture. Similarly,
experience of environment turns into
thought about environment. For adults, en-
vironmental experience tends to be a diffuse
continuum of “nature-body-mind-society”
[6].
Environmental or, more specifically,
geographical, experience is the theme of
Eric Dardel’s L’Homme et la Terre, pub-
lished in 1952. I discovered this short book
by chance in a university library some 40
years ago, and, to my knowledge, the work
has rarely been referenced by anyone else.
Dardel explores what he called geographi-
cality (géographicité)—the relationships
and experiences that bind human beings to
the earth, which he considered to be funda-
mental aspects of human existence. To elab-
orate his ideas, he used the expressive writ-
ings of early 20th-century regional geogra-
phers filtered through his own experiences
of different types of environments, includ-
ing the sky, oceans, shorelines, mountains,
barren plains, cities, and city streets. Dardel
suggested that geographicality is manifest in
landscape—an assemblage that “is not, in its
essence, made to be looked at, but is rather
an insertion of people into the world, a place
of life’s struggle, the manifestation of our dress the question of how this phenome-
being and that of others” [7]. non—be it place, landscape, space, build-
ings, silence, imagination, being, religion,
P henomenological description can be nature, or the earth—is experienced.
based on a reflective analysis of one’s These thinkers demonstrate that, while
own experiences, but this method can lead there are different ways to answer this ques-
to narrow subjectivity and is, frankly, very tion, they all require the hard work of clear
difficult to write about. For me, it makes seeing and careful thinking. Early in his ac-
better sense to hone skills of seeing and ob- count of his life at Walden Pond (which I
servation and then to find ways to access the regard as a phenomenological account of the
intersubjective experiences of others. In ad- practice of dwelling), Thoreau wrote:
dition to their own careful observations,
Ruskin worked from paintings, Bachelard Let us settle ourselves and work and wedge
from poetry, Cobb from autobiographies, our feet downward through the mud and
and Dardel from geographical essays. slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradi-
In my view, however, the quintessen- tion, and delusions and appearance... till we
tial example of phenomenological descrip- come to hard bottom and rocks in place,
tion based on the experiences of others is which we can call reality and say ‘This is’
William James’ The Varieties of Religious [9].
Experience, a book that probably had a sub-
stantial impact on the thinking of both Notes
Heidegger and Wittgenstein. James wrote in 1. E. Said, Orientalism (NY: Vintage Books,
the introduction that his book is an elabora- 1979), p. xxii.
tion of “the feelings, acts and experience of 2. J. W. von Goethe, Italian Journey (Harmonds-
individual [human beings] in their solitude, worth: Penguin, 1970), p. 1, p. 109 [origi-
so far as they stand in relation to whatever nally 1786–88]. “Clear fresh eyes” is an apt
they consider divine” [8]. summary of Goethe’s general approach to
James did not refer to his method as science and nature, discussed in D. Seamon
and A. Zajonc’s Goethe’s Way of Science: A
phenomenological; instead, he called it ei-
Phenomenology of Nature (Albany, NY:
ther empirical or pragmatic, though the es- SUNY Press, 1998).
sence of his approach, like phenomenology, 3. J. Ruskin, “The Nature of Gothic,” in The
is to study direct experiences and to avoid Stones of Venice, Volume II, Chapter VI, sec-
theoretical speculation. His writings incor- tions xv and xvi [1853].
porate a survey of subjective phenomena 4. J. Ruskin, “On Imagination,” in Modern Paint-
recorded in literature by “articulate and self- ers, Volume II, Section 2 [1846]. In a later
conscious” people who had no special eru- edition, Ruskin expressed misgivings about
dition but “lie along the beaten highway.” this particular interpretation but let it stand as
an example of his thinking.
His descriptions of religious experi-
5. G. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston:
ence follow what he referred to as an exis- Beacon Press, 1969), p. xv, p. xxxiii [origi-
tential point of view that embraces both un- nally 1958].
remarkable, everyday experiences of faith in 6. E. Cobb, The Ecology of Imagination in Child-
different religions, and also mysticism, in- hood (NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 1977), pp.
tense moments of conversion, and what he 28–29, p. 58, p. 65.
referred to as pathologies, exaggerations, 7. E. Dardel, L’Homme et La Terre (Paris:
and perversions. To grasp the variety of re- Presses Universitaires de France, 1954), pp.
ligious experiences, he focussed on particu- 1–2, p. 12, p. 41 [my translations].
8. W. James, 1902 The Varieties of Religious Ex-
lar cases and claimed, in an echo of Goethe
perience (London: Longmans Green and Co.,
and Ruskin, that “One must know concrete 1902). Quotations are from Lecture I and
instances first. One can see no farther into a Lecture XX.
generalization than just so far as one’s pre- 9. H. D. Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedi-
vious acquaintance with particulars enables ence, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p.
one to take it in.” 67 [originally 1854].
For me, these different approaches to
phenomenological description share a Image, p. 38: John Ruskin, South Side of St
strong family resemblance because they ad- Mark’s, Venice, c.1851, pencil/watercolor.
39
Phenomenology, Philosophy, and Praxis
Ingrid Leman Stefanovic
Stefanovic is Dean of the Faculty of Environment, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. She is also a Professor Emeritus at
the Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto. Her most recent book is The Natural City (Univ. of Toronto Press, 2012), co-
edited with Stephen Bede Scharper. ingrid.stefanovic@neimargroup.com. © 2014 Ingrid Leman Stefanovic.
What is Phenomenology? It may seem strange that this question has still to be asked half a century after the first works of Husserl.
The fact remains that it has by no means been answered.
A
century has passed since philoso-
pher Edmund Husserl published
Ideas. Almost 70 years have passed
since French philosopher Maurice Merleau-
Ponty wrote the words above, and his ques-
tion continues to be answered in many dif-
ferent ways. Some thinkers have interpreted
phenomenology in light of new findings in
the field of neuroscience and philosophy of
mind, building new bridges between disci-
plines [1]. Others have taken phenomenol-
ogy into the field of nursing and related
health-care fields, “helping us to grasp the
ordinary, the unexpected, and the ineffable
elements of human experience in health and
illness” [2]. Many researchers work in the
field of environmental and architectural
phenomenology, reflecting on the meaning
of place, embodiment, building, dwelling,
and home.
When I think of who has made a sig-
nificant contribution to this field, David
Seamon has a prominent place on the po-
dium, given his prolific list of publications
and extraordinary contribution to the com-
munity, provided via Environmental and
Architectural Phenomenology. He received
a service award from the Environmental Re-
search Design Association (EDRA) in 2006,
celebrating his accomplishments in advanc-
ing phenomenological possibilities within
the field of environmental design.
I am sure I am not the only supporter
of his work who feels that we could be
providing him with a number of additional
awards as well for his long career in support
of thoughtful, phenomenological research.
His determination to provide a forum for
phenomenological reflection is not only im-
pressive but always inspirational.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945, p. vii
Other contemporary writers who regu-
larly come to mind as key contributors to the
field of environmental and architectural
phenomenology include Bob Mugerauer;
Ed Casey; Jeff Malpas; Edward Relph and,
my most recent favorite, Henri Bortoft [3].
When I think of these researchers, I realize
they have all taken the philosophical dimen-
sions of phenomenology and enlarged those
concepts through interdisciplinary dialogue.
Such a task is no small achievement.
Classic philosophical texts, not to mention
dense phenomenological works such as
Heidegger’s Being and Time or Merleau-
Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception,
open vistas challenging to even the most so-
phisticated student of philosophy. Yet these
thinkers I’ve highlighted manage to take
those key classic texts and build upon them
without compromising the integrity of the
original philosophical message. To my
mind, in doing so, they not only validate the
mission of philosophy as “applied,” but they
take phenomenology into the lived world
and truly change it for the better.
I would suggest that phenomenology
is applied philosophy, in the true sense of
the term. As a method, it serves to remind us
of the significance of the full range of mean-
ing of human experience, including taken-
for-granted assumptions, values, and per-
ceptions often forgotten in analytic frame-
works. In attending to pre-thematic ways of
being-in-the-world, phenomenology helps
to comprehend human behavior in its full-
ness.
The larger task is to find ways in which
phenomenology can take that understanding
and provide guidance in the actual, deliber-
ate design of better places. Challenges re-
40
main in terms of both revealing implicit par-
adigms, values, and experiences of place, as
well as applying that knowledge to our city-
building practices. There has been much ac-
complished since Husserl; at the same time,
there is much more to be done. That promise
ensures that phenomenological work will
continue, particularly in the interdiscipli-
nary “application” to specific urban-design
challenges.
Let me end by extending my congrat-
ulations to EAP and to David Seamon for
keeping the phenomenological project on
the right track for decades. May he continue
to do so for many years to come!
Notes
1. See the work of Evan Thompson, includ-
ing Waking, Dreaming, Being (NY: Co-
lumbia Univ. Press, 2014, forthcoming);
and The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Sci-
ence and Human Experience (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1991).
2. Nursing and the Experience of Illness, I.
Madyar and J. Walton, eds. (London:
Routledge, 1999), p. 1; see also P. Mun-
hall, Revisioning Phenomenology: Nurs-
ing and Health Science Research (Lon-
don: Jones and Barlett, 1994).
3. See R. Mugerauer, Interpretations on Be-
half of Place (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
1994); E. Casey, Getting Back into Place
(Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press,
2009); J. Malpas, Place and Experience
(London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999);
E. Relph, Place and Placelessness (Lon-
don: Pion, 1976); Henri Bortoft, The
Wholeness of Nature (Hudson, NY:
Lindesfarne, 1996); and Taking Appear-
ance Seriously (Edinburgh: Floris, 2013).
In Celebration of a Conversation of Pathways
Elizabeth A. Behnke
Betsy Behnke is Coordinator and Senior Research Fellow of the Study Project in Phenomenology of the Body (SPPB), which encour-
ages concrete investigation and fosters networking among phenomenologists working in this area. sppb@openaccess.org. © 2014
Elizabeth A. Behnke.
S
hould I begin with an example drawn
from field notes in the life of a prac-
ticing phenomenologist? The time
and place: June, 2014, in Hildesheim, Ger-
many [1]. Three paths:
 The path through the countryside from
which one plunges into the trees at a
certain spot, unexpectedly emerging at
a small structure filled, for my German
colleague Rolf, with the memory of the
sounds made by a Japanese musician
(sounds that accompanied the silence
perfectly);
 The path that led us around the little
lake, conversing all the while, after our
dinner with Professor Ogawa;
 The path we took more than once (and
at different times of day) between
Rolf’s home and the campus.
Already, several possible experiential
structures emerge:
 Experiencing a path as a direction to a
goal, even if the goal is not known in
advance to someone taking this path for
the first time;
 Experiencing a path that brings us back
to where we started, even though we
continually moved forward in a single
direction;
 Experiencing a path linking two
places—now one is the starting point
and the other is the destination, then
later in the day they exchange roles as
we travel the path in the opposite direc-
tion.
In the last case, both Rolf’s home and
the places where the seminar met (including
the grassy, tree-sheltered space behind the
building as well as “our” room inside) work
as “destinations,” each at their own time.
But neither destination is arbitrary or indif-
ferent. They reflect our destinies, whether
the seminar group as a whole is engaged in
a collective experiment in phenomenologi-
cal practice at the university, or Rolf and I
are back home discussing phenomenology
with the help of good wine and a full moon
or a summer thunderstorm. In other words,
when Rolf and I walk the pathway between
his home and the campus, this makes sense
for us because we are also fellow sojourners
following a pathway of inquiry and explora-
tion we call “phenomenology.”
T his lived connectedness stands out even
more clearly for me when I recall the
memorable night that five of us from five
different countries gathered for dinner, an
occasion not merely for some good German
beer but for outstanding camaraderie and
much laughter. On one level, we were at the
restaurant in that particular small hotel be-
cause it was where two of us were staying
as well as being “on the way” home for the
rest of us.
More profoundly, however, we were to-
gether at that specific place and time be-
cause our life-paths had converged, coming
together not only through a shared commit-
ment to the phenomenological tradition, but
through our complementary work with the
lived body, movement, and dance. With
such colleagues, one can embrace at a door-
way—a threshold—to say goodbye at a time
of literal, physical parting, yet remain com-
panions (whether for a while or for a life-
time) on the “path with a heart.”
Here it is clear that, even though I ini-
tially set out to describe a path as a feature
of the natural and built worlds, I find myself
describing a multi-dimensional experience
in which the possibility of following a path
of phenomenological practice plays as great
a role as the bricks, gravel, and earth of the
visible paths beneath our feet. In what fol-
lows, I accordingly explore some reso-
41
nances between certain experiential possi-
bilities of paths as elements of lived land-
scapes and similar structures emerging in
the lived experience of phenomenology it-
self—or more specifically, phenomenologi-
cal method (methodos, from hodos, way,
journey)—as a path [2].
A s a first example, consider someone
walking along and coming to a fork in
the path. This path branches off in two di-
rections, offering two ways to proceed, and
to go on at all, one must make a decision
(Bloomer and Moore 1977, 86). One exam-
ple of this structure in phenomenological
practice involves a fundamental choice of
method: Husserl’s path of description, or
Heidegger’s path of interpretation? [3].
Here, it is striking that the notion of
“pathway” is often used to characterize
Heidegger’s life and work (e.g., Pöggeler
1989). Thus, it is entirely fitting that the
motto for his Gesamtausgabe—the project
devoted to publishing all of his writings—
speaks of “pathways, not works” [4], espe-
cially since Heidegger himself often refers
to paths in a number of connections. Some
examples:
 He uses a particular country path of his
youth as an occasion for interpretation
(1981);
 He sets a conversation in motion along
a different country path (1966);
 He draws on the word “pathmarks” as
the title for one collection of essays
(1998);
 In the original German title of another
collection (2002), he recovers, beneath
the conventional use of the word
Holzwege to indicate being led astray
(being on the wrong track), its original
meaning—paths leading into a forest or
wood.
 In the last example, he uses the original
understanding of Holzwege to suggest paths
that simply lead where they lead, even if the
region they wander through contains no tra-
ditionally canonized “destination.” He even
links the notion of language as a “path” or
“way” (Weg) with the Tao (1971a, 92f.) and
contrasts the act of traversing a path already
there with the work of clearing a way (as
across a snow-covered field) and keeping it
open, bringing it forth as a path for the first
time (1971a, 129ff.).
When we set forth in the pregiven
world, it is the path itself that walks us, so to
speak, requiring us to adjust our gait with its
steppingstones and stairs, inviting us to
move swiftly ahead or to ramble and linger.
But whether the path was originally shaped
by the erosion of stones, by animals seeking
water, or by landscape architects, it has a
history, encompassing an inaugural estab-
lishment or pathmaking; the gradual conse-
cration of the path through repeated use; and
perhaps a further phase in which a path no
longer taken becomes overgrown, its desti-
nation forgotten or irrelevant, the world it
gathers no longer shining forth [5], for in a
Heideggerian interpretation, a path, once
made, only keeps its world alive if we hear
the call of this pathway (1981).
F or Husserl, however, what first stands
out is the need for the initial pathmaking
wherever there are no pregiven paths to
guide us. On more than one occasion, he
turns to the image of the explorer of the
“trackless wilderness” of an entirely new
continent (5/154; cf. 3–1/224) [6] to de-
scribe his discovery of the “immense fields”
of investigation (20–1/303) opened up by
the new paths and directions of phenomeno-
logical research (20–1/272, 315).
In the process, he delineates several im-
portant features of phenomenology as a
pathway of inquiry:
 When we set forth on the path of phe-
nomenological work, we do not know
in advance what the investigation will
deliver (HM8/347f.): The path proves
its practicality and fruitfulness as a way
to proceed only when we actually take
it (34/291).
 We necessarily proceed step by step
(24/445; 20–1/273, 286; 8/169), while
at the same time remaining cognizant of
the larger horizon (e.g., the concrete
whole we ultimately want to explicate),
since it is what orients our progress
every step of the way (34/296) [7].
 As a result, the unity of the path con-
sists of its being a path toward a goal—
but as Husserl tells us in the same
breath, the goal may not lie at the end
of the path, but in the journey itself
(15/419).
Furthermore, Husserl’s turn to the fig-
ure of the explorer makes it clear that once
a path has been made, it becomes intersub-
jectively accessible. It is true that there are
many difficulties to overcome when first
penetrating into the “new world” opened up
by phenomenological practice (3–1/5)—
Husserl refers in this context to “the path of
thorny investigations” (17/251; cf. 8/169)
requiring “patient and constant work”
(HM6/6). Once a way has been made, how-
ever, a second explorer can follow in the
footsteps of the first (20–1/325).
It is here that Husserl emphatically
identifies the task shared by both explorers
and phenomenologists: namely, the task of
description (20–1/326). If one actually trav-
els to the new land, one can remain un-
moved by criticism from geographers who
never bothered to make the journey
(5/154f.) because the explorer’s reports (like
those of the phenomenologist who turns to
the phenomena themselves) are based on the
firsthand evidence of actual experience.
It is true that the observations made by
both the phenomenologist and the geo-
graphical explorer can be incomplete so that
distinctions are missed, as when the ex-
plorer interprets what will turn out to be two
different rivers as parts of one (20–1/322).
But subsequent explorers traveling along
the first explorer’s path may improve the de-
scriptions (20–1/325, 3–1/224). And not
only that: What is opened up by the first path
is a realm of inquiry where “other paths are
possible” (17/11).
F or the phenomenologist, then, the
“goal” is the exploration of the entire
terrain of this new field, with the field of
phenomenological work conceived as a
place where new explorers taking new path-
ways will necessarily discover new features
of the landscape or reveal new aspects of
42
features already found (20–1/325). Eventu-
ally, once the main geographical structures
of this new land have been revealed, future
generations are able to walk the paths to-
gether (cf. 1/48) and to carry out a thorough
cultivation that goes beyond the initial ex-
plorer’s efforts (5/161). In each case, what
is required is not merely knowledge “about”
the goals and the methods (the pathways to
reach these goals): “we must walk the paths
themselves” (24/445).
This becomes clear when we consider
various ways in which a path can fail. For
instance, we may find our path blocked by
an unsurpassable obstacle. Then there is the
case of a path that fails by leading you away
from where you wanted to go, or to alter the
example, one might be well on one’s way,
only to find out that the path is leading you
toward somewhere you really do not want to
go.
What these three scenarios share, how-
ever, is that someone was already underway
on some path, and from the standpoint of a
rigorous descriptive phenomenology, a
pathway can also fail to be experienced as a
pathway by not being taken. It is true that
we may recognize a formation as a “path”
when we see it on a map, but in such a con-
text all points of the path are given simulta-
neously and no direction of travel is privi-
leged.
In contrast, for situated experiencers
who are not simultaneously “here” and
“there” but continually bear their lived
“here” within themselves, the experience of
actually taking a path involves being at a
certain location at each moment (whether at
a beginning or already underway) and pro-
ceeding in a certain direction (even if there
is no fixed and pregiven goal or no discern-
ible end as long as one lives). Moreover, it
is true that the literal pathways we encounter
in everyday life exist in an already-consti-
tuted space and take measurable time to
traverse.
et if we are actually to “walk the paths
Y themselves” (24/445), rather than
merely talking or thinking about doing so,
our ongoing experience will necessarily dis-
play the most fundamental structure govern-
ing primal temporalization, primal spatiali-
zation, and primal motility: “this/more,” as
“this” now spills over into the immediately
“next” now, and as each fresh actualization
of my kinaesthetic possibilities, of my capa-
bility for “more” movement, opens “more”
space—the immediately adjacent stretch of
the path my movement is taking (Behnke
2009, §5.1). In this way, a path is a promise
redeemed step by step, and the only way a
path can keep its promise is if we correla-
tively accept its invitation and walk the path
itself, following wherever it leads.
Along the way, however, we find side
paths, intersections, byways, paths that lead
to other paths, signposts to distant destina-
tions, and so on. There are also places where
pathways meet—places celebrated as spe-
cial nodes of activity, interchange, and mu-
tual enrichment and influence (cf. Alexan-
der et al. 1977, pattern 30).
Yet this is also true of phenomenolog-
ical pathways. For me, Environmental & Ar-
chitectural Phenomenology is not only a
nexus where many pathways, coming from
many different directions, can meet, but an
inspiration for those exploring the experien-
tial dimension to set forth on pathways of
their own, secure in the knowledge that
there is more than one way to go about the
task.
By providing a forum for all such ex-
plorers’ reports of their journey, EAP has
become a place that is hospitable to a genu-
ine conversation among pathways. For dec-
ades, EAP Editor David Seamon has served
as the curator of this place of many meet-
ings, the host of these lively, diverse discus-
sions. On behalf of the community that this
place has gathered, I therefore offer you,
David, our most grateful thanks.
Notes
1. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Rolf Elber-
feld for inviting me to the University of
Hildesheim to share my work as part of
his series of seminars on experimentalBehnke, E. A., 2009. “Bodily Protentional-
and transformative phenomenology. ity,” Husserl Studies 25: 185–217.
2. Here, it is not possible to provide a com-
Bloomer, K. C., and C. W. Moore, with R.
plete phenomenology of paths; for some J. Yudell, 1977. Body, Memory, and Ar-
starting places, see Norberg-Schulz 1971,
chitecture. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ.
ch. 2; Alexander et al. 1977, patterns 30,
Press.
36, 52, 120, 121; Bloomer and Moore Casey, E. S., 1993. Getting Back into Place.
1977, ch. 8; Seamon 1979, 28, themes 4 Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
Delius, H., 1952–53. “Descriptive Interpre-
and 14. It is likewise impossible to present
tation,” Philosophy and Phenomenologi-
a full account of the extensive use of the
figure of the “path” or “way” in Husserlcal Research 13: 305–23.
and Heidegger. Heidegger, M., 1966. “Conversation on a
Country Path about Thinking,” in Dis-
3. See Delius 1952–53. Of course, the situa-
tion can be more complex, e.g., a thinker
course on Thinking. NY: Harper & Row,
can use both methods, or other ap- pp. 58–90.
proaches, such as Goethean phenomenol-———, 1971a. On the Way to Language.
ogy, may come into play. NY: Harper & Row.
4. E.g., Seamon 1979, 29: “Phenomenology ———, 1971b. Poetry, Language, Thought.
is as much a process as a product ....” NY: Harper & Row.
———, 1981. “The Pathway,” in
5. See Heidegger 1981 on a path gathering a
world; on the world gathered by a Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, T.
bridge—which for Norberg-Schulz is “a Sheehan, ed. Chicago: Precedent, pp. 69–
particularly expressive path” (1971, 26;72.
cf. 53f.)—see Heidegger 1971b, 152ff. ———, 1998. Pathmarks. W. McNeill, ed.
6. All references in this form refer to Hus-
Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
———, 2002. Off the Beaten Track. Cam-
serl 1950ff., cited by volume/page num-
ber; citations from Husserl 2001ff. follow
bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
the same convention using the abbrevia-
Husserl, E., 1950ff. Husserliana. Den Haag/
tion HM. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff/Kluwer Ac-
7. Cf. Casey 1993, 278ff., on a kind of “dou-
ademic Publishers/Springer.
ble-tracking” where at each stage of my
———, 2001ff. Husserliana Materialien.
journey I experience my current “here” in
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publish-
relation to the “there” I’m headed for; see
ers/Springer.
also Alexander et al. 1977, pattern 120, on
Norberg-Schulz, C., 1971. Existence, Space,
experiencing paths in terms of intermedi-
and Architecture. NY: Praeger.
ate goals. Pöggeler, O., 1989. Martin Heidegger’s
Path of Thinking. Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
References Humanities Press.
Alexander, C., S. Ishikawa, and M. Silver- Seamon, D., 1979. A Geography of the Life-
stein with M. Jacobson, I. Fiksdahl-King, world. London: Croom Helm.
and S. Angel, 1977. A Pattern Language.
NY: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI (this issue only): 10.13140/2.1.1134.0161
43
Sue Michael, Booleroo Backyard—Panel 1, 60 x 267 cm, 2014; see Panel 3, p. 1, and Michael’s essay on her work, p. 11.

Sue Michael, Booleroo Backyard—Panel 2, 60 x 212 cm, 2014. In an email, Michael describes the elderly woman who kept this backyard
garden: “She often worked all morning and afternoon in her garden, all through the seasons. Even on unbearably hot days, she could
be found pulling weeds from beneath the shrubs. She was from Booleroo Centre and was 93 years old.”

Environmental & Architectural

Phenomenology
Published three times a year, EAP is a forum and clearing house
for research and design that incorporate a qualitative approach to
environmental and architectural experience.
One key concern of EAP is design, education, and policy sup-
porting and enhancing natural and built environments that are
beautiful, alive, and humane. Realizing that a clear conceptual
stance is integral to informed research and design, the editors
emphasize phenomenological approaches but also cover related
styles of qualitative research. EAP welcomes essays, letters,
reviews, conference information, and so forth.
Exemplary Themes
 The nature of environmental and architectural experience;
 Sense of place, including place identity and place attachment;
 Architectural and landscape meaning;
 The environmental, architectural, spatial, and material
dimensions of lifeworlds;
 Changing conceptions of space, place, and nature;
 Home, dwelling, journey, and mobility;
 Environmental encounter and its relation to environmental
responsibility and action;
 Environmental design as place making;
 The role of everyday things—furnishings, tools, clothing,
interior design, landscape features, and so forth—in
supporting people’s sense of environmental wellbeing;
 Sacred space, landscape, and architecture;
 The practice of a lived environmental ethic.
Editor
Dr. David Seamon,
Architecture Department, Kansas State University
211 Seaton Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-2901 USA
Tel: 785-532-5953; triad@ksu.edu
Subscriptions & Back Issues
Beginning in 2015, EAP is digitally open-source. Current and back
issues of EAP are available at the following digital addresses:
https://ksu.academia.edu/DavidSeamon
www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/EAP.html
http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522 (archive copies)
Readers who wish to receive an email notice when a new issue is
electronically available, should send an email to the editor with that
request. Though EAP is now digital, we still have production costs and
welcome reader donations.
We produce a limited number of paper copies for libraries and
subscribers who prefer paper copies. To receive a paper subscription,
interested parties should send name and street address to the editor.
Paper subscriptions for individuals are $20 US; $30 non-US (cash or
check in US dollars only).
Back issues of EAP, in hard copy, 1990–present, are available for
$15/volume (3 issues/volume). Contact the editor for details.